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BOOKS by WALDO FEANK

The Unwelcome Man

The Dark Mother

Rahab

City Block (in preparation)

Our America

The Art of The Vieux Colombier

Virgin Spain (in preparation)

RAHAB

WALDO FRANK

*«r

BONI AND LIVERIGHT

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

RAHAB

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY

BONI & LlVERIGHT, INC.

Printed in the United States of America

To
Magic

CONTENTS

PAGE

One
BRASS GAS CHANDELIER ... 13

Two
RIVER GARDEN ..... 21

Three

WHITE SKY ..... 69

Four

PAVEMENT OVER EARTH ... 81

Five

CLARA 167

Six

PAVEMENT BROKEN . . . 203

Seven
EARTH •« 245

"Be consoled: thou wouldst not seek
me if thou hadst not found me ..."

PASCAL

ONE
BRASS GAS CHANDELIER

TJBE door opened against the drawn chain,
grating against it.
In the grey strip a woman's face, very
grey, very unexpectant, suddenly was bright.

It measured a man, young, standing at ease.
The chain clicked free. "0 it's you, Mr. Sam-
son." The door opened wide, shut them in.

The hall was a long shadow beyond the glow of
them standing. He was quiet waiting, not sheer
against her: his shaggy coat poured the street's
coldness. She was a dim thing about eyes.

"I'm so glad it's you, Mr. Samson."

She walked noiseless through shadow, she took
no space from it, she was infinitesimal within a
mood. He followed.

"I was taking it right easy . . reading."

In the gaslight she turned and fronted him.
She took his coat. He was a fair boy, gentle,
somewhat plump. He sat down, she stood.

— I have been in this room before, I have seen
this woman before. It is not the sort of room,
she is not the sort of woman I want to see for I
am here for neither. . . Why strangely now this
sense of her reality upon me?

It was her room, there they were after all, the
woman in her room touching upon him. — Let me
see in this silence the woman in her room.

Her quiet words did not obtrude upon a silence
whose margin he caught as it waved. He saw her
a battered creature. He saw her absurdity of

13

painted cheeks, two imitation flowers stuck in
the ruts of a road. lie sat in a room whose dingi-
ness enarmed him. He sat in the misery of this
woman. He sat deep.

" Still so cold out?" Over her head a chan-
delier . . brass gas, hideous brutal under the
flecked ceiling. His feet glowed with renewing
warmth. In his eye beneath his shoes a carpet of
acid green.

— We sit . . She sits in a cloud of dinginess.
Sharp spirit veiled in a cloudy flesh. Now: cen-
ters of glow, thrown from the woman, solid like
her spirit. He was aware of loveliness.

Under the blow of the chandelier a delicate
Pembroke table . . book and a glass of whisky.

— Under my arms, pressing against my back,
a high arched Windsor chair.

In the break of her hip, standing, a Hepple— *
white desk.

— We have no furniture like this at home!

She spoke. He peered into the form of her
words. His eyes took the gloss of the subtle table,
it was one with her words' accent. Futile words
. . grammatical, well-ordered. A subtle table,
and beyond a virulent huge sideboard. A faint
quaint accent in her pointless words curling like
heat of hidden flame above the table, against the
sideboard: whispers in how she spoke, like these
glowing poems in wood, of a day distant from his
New York where there had been leisure and when
from the dung of human misery America grew
flowers.

A quiet pain in the table and her words . . a

14

distant pain. He did not put his immediate ques-
tion.

She felt his pause; in it drew up her chair.
She sat he thought with grace athwart him at the
table. The whisky glass was gone, he had not no-
ticed her hide it. The book was there with her
hand. Black little book. Bible! He felt her feel-
ing him feel her. Now she was silent.

They were silent upon each other. Heavily.

His brow twitched. — Let me see her! She
was cold and helpless. He understood he could
not understand. She seemed a chaste woman with
burnt eyes. She drew him.

Words to pull him aloof: "I am afraid we don't
read that book . . half enough. . . I don't I
mean/' he blushed. "Do we, Mrs. Luve?"

— Wrong. Wrong! A delicate line left . . he
felt left . . under her folded thin lip. Lip folded
away.

"It's a rattling good book."

"0 but you do."
«If»

"You read it enough. . . You're a Jew."
"I'm a Jew," he repeated. Above her and the
table the flourishes and l»ulgings of the chandelier
. . brass gas . . were lewd. "I'm a Jew. If
there's any soul in me worth speaking of, it's in
that book." She leaned forward upon the table
with elbows drawn tight back. "Yet I can't read
a word of it, except in English . . I'm ashamed
of that."

She laughed embarrassed. He was understand-
ing deeper he could not understand. She was up

15

swiftly. She took the Bible, opened a door in the
sideboard. Glint of glasses, plush, odor of liquors.
She placed the Bible within them.

"I suppose," a smile to her face, the first: as
sudden again her face was grey, ' * . . . you came
for Thelma ?"

"Why . . yes." — Of course for that I came,
for that only I come ever to your dirty flat . .
She has delicate fingers. . . How else did I come
at first! Dirty? There was a silence fringing
his questions, veiling them, making them false.
In the silence the presence of strangeness.

"I am afraid I may not be able to get her . .
right away."

Her fingers curled up. He felt how they had
drooped from the hard square palms like shoots
frozen in a cold Spring.

"There's just a chance. If you'll . . excuse
me I'll phone."

The door shut him in.

He sat quiet because he wanted to get up, hunt
for something. Bible? He walked up and down
because he wanted to stay, hoped she would find
Thelma.

He needed Thelma to-night. ... He knew this.

—I do not feel it now. For only a sharp need

brought him to this flat he despised. Where

alone Thelma would meet him. — I am here again.

I must need Thelma. Mrs. Luve was back.

"I'm sorry. Thelma's gone to a Show, with
some friends. There's just a chance . .. later . .

she might possibly go after eleven to the Garden
Cafe. I could phone there, then." Mrs. Luve
stood in the door, her face was bright, she smiled
again it was grey. "You "

He shook his head, not getting up. She did not
stir also. Her face was bright. Her mouth trem-
bled. Pie said: "Have you any beer, Mrs. Luve?
We might have a drink? "

He could not help seeing her, seeing her more
and more. Frail slain fingers resting upon a table
warmer than her hand. She all a sapling broken
in frost . . standing seasons dead.

-What is there here to see! He pulled a bill
from his pocket. As his hand went toward hers,
a hot wind stopped it. He felt them both cold.
Under her eyes he saw a shadow like a whip's
mark.

He put his money away.

She left the room.

She returned, she carried a silver platter. Upon
it a bottle of wine. Two slim glasses.

It was long silence now, with them less heavy
against it. Silence full with its own mood, its
own blood, strong to live.

The wine stood erect on the subtle table. Mrs.
Luve leaned and poured of it, a drop first in her
glass, then his glass full, then her glass full. Her
bare arm pouring red wine came from a dim ki-
mona.

... In the face of a worn woman black eyes
burning: eyes blazing against the face, leaping
from face and woman: eyes touching the red of
the wine.

17

He felt : — I am disappearing.
There is a silence like light
Upon us.

Moving like light a silence
Upon words.

There will be words moving in light:
There will be lighted words. ...

18

TWO

RIVER GARDEN

SPRING ... a Southern city in song. A city
drifting fading into the wide arms of earth,
into trees, fields running under grass, into
trees, into high thrusts of earth, into trees, trees.
The city a raised shadow upon earth. Against
earth's sweep through the Precinct of suns and
stars, apart from sun and stars — blotch of hard
houses leaning back upon the dead days of their
makers — whole city leaning back, falling away
from the wide freedom of sun, earth, stars, twirl-
ing together locked. And they two . . man and
girl . . clasped in the steadfast spin of life — sun
stars earth dust — that swung away from the city.

Fanny Dirk was on her back. Under: grass,
roots thrusting up in erection, spilling in bud.
Over: he. Under and over: One. She was viced
in One : Grass, hair, fingers, twigs broken to leaf,
lips and earth hot against her . . One. She was
surrounded by One. She was beyond distinctions.
She was One. She was in ecstasy. . .

Then they walked to their horses on the distant
road.

A house, coddling itself warm, despite bright
elms, in its shadows of men, cast a grey finger up
from the Town to the young man's mind. His
house . . running no longer away from the im-
mobile dance of earth and sun . . reached up
now, arrogant, clambered with its long harsh

21

shadows into the mind and mood of his mother's
and father's son.

"Fanny!"
—Harry, Harry ... 0 you . . you my life !

1 ' Fanny, now we must get married. "

— Hush! I hate you. How can you speak so
now?

"Why are you silent, Fanny? I'm a gentleman,
little girl. Don't think I respect you less, be-
cause you love me. . . I love you . . we . . . "

— No respect, then!

" . . will be married. You are not less the lady."

— Stop, stop, stop!

' ' Secretly, of course. Till I am done with Col-
lege. Not so long, Honey. You can wait? We'll
have a real wedding, then."

— Can't you stop? What are you killing? What
are you killing? Can't we stop?

Fanny Dirk became the wife of Harry How-
land Luve.

Mrs. Luve held her slender glass in frail spent
fingers. She sipped. Her hot eyes swept above
frail flesh, spun glass.

— I want you to see me! I want you to see
me!

Mr. Samson nodded. — What else can I do?

— Can you see this? I was as fresh and ruddy
as a maple blossom ! . . .

She was hard, she was intact. Her husband
took her to a little house on the best street : three

22

squares away was the Luve Mansion which one
day should be his. "This is our home. It's small
dear. But so are you small. We'll live here till
our love bursts it."

He was tall and thin, yet he gave the air of
softness. His big black eyes being soft, his deli-
cate hair that lay thinning on the transparent
tinge of his brow gave his sapling body the air of
holding a softness. He had small dimpled hands
tapering to fingers with which to hold her who
was hard and intact.

"01 love it!"

She did not love the hard Luve Mansion, her
own home had been prim and small, her hardness
needed tender and small things of the world.

"01 love it, Harry! I'm glad it's no larger.
0 — what a kitchen! Can't I do for you right
snug in that gem of a kitchen. ' '

"No, sweet, not that. Mammy Sue comes
along. I can't say No to Mammy. I can't begin
now saying No . . when I'm married. She's been
waiting', fixin' for that. She's been totin' me
from a baby just for that. You'll surrender,
Honey ! She loves you for making me surrender
. . to her."

"And I bake such biscuits."

"You may . . when Mammy's not looking."

She made him sit down. "You're so high!"
She clapped her hands. Sharp, she kissed his
hair, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Sharp kisses.
Each finger tip she kissed. "0 — 0 you!"
She opened his waistcoat, she opened one button

23

of his shirt. A sharp kiss on his chest. She leaped
away, clapped her hands.

"I'll manage Mammy/'

"Whom couldn't you manage?"

— You. . . I leap gaily clapping my hands, my
Love. I leap on Pain, on the shadow of Doubt I
leap. What can I do with you ?

She was on her knees : her arms embraced his
legs, her cheek was hot against his cold shoes.

— Under the Pain is there sunlight for dancing?
Under the doubt is there a solid world?

"She loves me," said to himself Harry How-
land Luve. ' ' Blessed sweet ! ' ' — Well, I Ve mar-
ried her. She's married to a Luve. She's leap-
ing, dancing on a joy I can understand.

Mrs. Luve and Mr. Samson talked of small mat-
ters pleasantly.

— He sits there sweetly, chatting of small mat-
ters. 0 it is good. 0 it is cool water. Bless you !
He leaves me alone, he does not touch me. I am
myself. We move marvelously into myself. He
is content there, merely talking, with me a woman,
of small matters.

— I have a mind, good mind for others. You
shall have the benefit of that whenever you need
it. I '11 find out whenever . . good good Boy! . . .

— I am alone. That is the blessing of talking
with you here on cool small matters. You do not
touch me as the world does when I am alone with
no one. 0 you heal me : will you at least, after

24

these years, these years, such years, be my
healer? Not touching! The heal and the health
and the miracle of that. Not touched, at last.
The years full of bloody bubbles, each year a bub-
ble of my blood unhealed. I shall not tell you of
myself. You will feel. . . .

—For thanks of God . . your God . . I embrace
you, Boy. When one has a God one can have cool
small matters. Let us talk on, for your God's
sake, of your cool small matters.

"Why do you drink! 0 Harry . . why, why
now!"

"You are not always there. At College you
were not there, Fanny. Drink was. One took
what was to take."

"But now . ."

"Drink was there first. 0 I don't know. When
I am drunk I am wrapped in warm smooth cling-
ing stuffs — like entrails — like insides of a great
warm creature. When I drink I am wrapped in
a woman. . . Let me creep into you, Beloved.
Farther, nearer. 0 you are so whole. Won't you
let me creep away inside of you!"

"Harry I am all open to you. Come."

"No dear. 0 my love! No, dear, I can't. God
damn you. You entice me . . impossibly. There
you are — you are a woman, there. I can't touch
you . . you're there. I am here. Touch you?
Break you. I'd smash you into this air if I could.
Damn you! Damn you. Why shouldn't I have

25

another drink? It goes inside of me . . all of
it . . serves me . . warms me. It's mine, that.
Going inside of me, same as me going inside of
it. Inside of you . . impossibilities. God damn
your sure solid eyes. Let me get out."

She lifted his head from her lap. ' ' Go then. ' '

He rose uneasy to his feet. He wiped straying
silk hairs from his swimming eyes. He turned:
stumbled: sank. He sobbed.

She placed him on his back on the floor : cradled
his head in her hands.

' ' Let me get out ! Let me get out ! ' ' he shouted,
motionless.

"Sh-sh. You can go."

" Fanny, Fanny," he whispered, "hold me . .
hold me still." His body swung on the floor, the
floor careened about his eyes. Her arms, cradling
him, swaying his head, were alone moveless.

She dragged him to bed. He was a helpless
drunken child. She undressed him. Her hands,
touching his naked body, brought to his face a
veil of ease. Her hands ceased. He raised his
naked flesh from the hot covers.

' * Give me a drink!"

"No."

His eyes swung back from the wall of her re-
sponse. But his arms surged forward, they caught
her. He dragged her against his naked flesh. . . .

She, little woman, sat in her rocking chair on
the porch, looked up at the flood of sun and tried
to find the world.

26

—Up the sun tliat is warm and good, up the

sun that blinds me

Struggling, not overwhelmed, I send my
eyes . . .

She was clad in a pink dress whose dainty soft-
ness brought clear the silvery atunement of her
body. There was naught slack in her. Her bare
arms were a gentling, a subtle rounding of her
bones: a haze of dark hair on them: hands rose
intact and long from the fine wrists like flower
from stem. The little breasts stood in the pink
tulle, alert, infinitely one with the awareness of
her eyes and wrists . . like the antennae of a
bug holding the world upon their frailty.

She sat challenging sun: not wilting: waiting
her husband.

— Every day now he drinks. He gambles. He
loves me. What have I to do with cards and
liquor ?

She, larger woman, sat deeper in her chair:
lost now in a swathing gown of gray that rose like
a wave to her white neck. Her shoulders and her
chest ; bare, were still planturous in their running
variance of plane and mood : strong seeking chin,
throat swelling as if with graceful words, chest
rising downward from the aloof virginity of her
neck to the slow fulness of her heavying breasts.
Fanny was pregnant. She sat there . . taut limpid
body . . in the sun, eyes unwilted, about her child
like a sunny song hiding an omen. She sat there
gradually giving way . . her taut and limpid sun-

27

shape giving way . . to the dark press of a
swollen larva tangled inside her blood, pressing,
kicking, sucking weight to rend.

Harry Luve was gone three days, without a
word . . plenty of signs. She knew.

— He has gone. I shall see him again. 0 yes.
Long after I have looked in fmy1 child's eyes.
Thank God for that ! I shall look long, years per-
haps? long and deep in my baby's eyes in order to
understand how I must see him again.

His going down was simple like all of Harry
Luve . . . simple like a very plaintive song. She
sat between the high sun and the low wail of her
husband : balanced about a child.

How sustain the light madnesses of College^
except in drink and gambling. How nourish the
child in him he was 1 save with the rolling bloods
of liquor, the swift tossings, cradlings, plungings
of luck at cards. At the end of deep immersement
in a helpless joy forever Birth which was an end :
the Birth here at last Disgrace, as the Birth once
air. Too much money lost, too much folly of a
night in his cups. A woman half dead, half naked,
bent across a table, a mirror smashed, ten thou-
sand dollars debt. A birth that! Harry slipped
down into it as doubtless he had slipped from his
mother's womb . . whimpering, blinking, inartic-
ulate— nostalgic. He was gone.

But his father had Honor to groom. The debt
was paid, the woman was salvaged and sent off.
No word in the papers.

"He will find out he's safe . . turn up, sobered

28

. . my Dear. Never worry, " his father assured
her.

"And I . . . ?"

"You are his wife, Frances. You must wait.77

She got up.

"Will you move my chair, Colonel Luve . . over
there?"

She walked, clear slender neck and legs with
her child so full before her her walk seemed to
say: "My child comes first."

Her husband's parent shook his head.

"What can you do, my daughter? You must
wait ..."

She sank in her new-placed chair.

". .in the sun."

— She is pregnant, Colonel Luve explained
away the inconsequent words.

Fanny waited.

"I know your name . . I knew it always . . now
you will let me! — Samson Brenner."

"You say my name as if it meant something.77

"Perhaps it does. Perhaps it does. Go on.77

"I sometimes wonder why I am studying Law.
Writing poems is more fun . . and you know?
seems realler!"

:'Yet you distrust writing poems . . "

" — bad poems.77

"Bad because you distrust doing anything for
fun?"

"You know, I think you7re right!"

29

He smiled like a child, pleased but a bit scared
when he finds true what he had sought in make-
believe. His brow wrinkled. He turned away
from the brass glare of the light.

"That light is horrid, " she said.

" — all substitutes for the sun," he said.

"That is so."

"Yet what a wonder what a glory," his body
stiffened, "that we should have a substitute at
all!"

"Why glory, Samson Brenner, if the substitute
is false! . . . Wait."

Mrs. Luve came back. She placed two candles
between them on the Pembroke table.

"Shut out the gas," she said.

There was blackness, heavy, hot, clasping them
both. Two jets of liquid glow tongued from the
mellow wood, made the wood lift and gleam like a
sun's ray through moving cloud: cast wreath-
ings subtle, evanescent, out against the blackness.

They were quiet. The candles . . two fingers
rose, touched them across the table, joined them,
hushed them.

"May I say something to you?"

"What, Mrs. Luve?"

"You have a tongue that speaks truth, you
have a tongue that lies."

"Haven't we all?"

"You must not have a tongue that lies : for you
have a tongue that is true."

"Haven't we all . . .!"

"You must not "

30

-He does not see himself.
He moves through a black Hole
Bright — pouring brightness.
Where is a Sun whereby a Sun may see?

-I have ten fingers . . ten to weave a Web
To catch at God.

Too frail — too fine . . . yet you slip
through?

Fanny looked out from her back sun-parlor
upon trees.

Beside a high grey wall rose the thick life of a
magnolia; beech and cherry and dogwood sang
their light swift presences, a lawn was fresh like
dew.

"Trees," she murmured . . . — They have
waited the Winter. It is Spring, they prepare to
give a whole new life — blossom and seed. That is
why it is Spring. Each year . . at their feet the
dead leaves sink and rot. They push forth new
ones. Each year . . They cannot help them-
selves.

She could go no farther. — Helpless bravery.
. . . Upstairs in her cradle Edith slept. Harry
was gone, voiceless, eight months. She was im-
prisoned in her man's absence, in her child's
presence.

She had a dream. Harry jumped on his black
horse, stood over her in his stirrups. He rib-
boned the black flanks red with his spurs. The

31

horse leaped: as he flew away he leaned to her
and cut deep her breast with his crop . . . She
awoke thinking of Edith. Her child was the red
salute of Harry 's going: the scar of it. She loved
her child.

She had a dream. A tall man with a baby's
face lay crowding in her arms. She could kiss
his baby's face, but he had tall legs, they spun
and twirled about her. They struck a lamp which
fell, the house was in flame. All of the town
rushed into her house: she saw his father and
mother, her mother who was dead and brother . .
all of the city came into her sitting among flame
holding a baby face. They stood there, pointing,
poising, sneering at her. "What is she going to
do? She sat rigid holding her baby face.
"What a fool, she sits there nursing a dead
child with fire all about her ! ' ' She was helpless.

Now, sitting, watching the brave helpless trees
she could go no farther. She had a child whom
she loved and who was the wound of another love
upon her.

— Trees do not think, they are brave helplessly.
Why am I not brave? Trees lift into air. I am
buried.

She was buried. Her friends and her relations,
seeing her Mrs. Luve, buried her daily. Her child,
seeing her mother, buried her daily. Her hus-
band, a distant stroke in a far world, ploughing,
ploughing like steel . . heaping the soil of his
ploughings forever upon her, buried.

— Trees do not think. I try to think. Thinking
is bad for Winter. Thinking is bad for Spring.

32

Thinking chills Spring. Thinking calls sap to
Winter which Winter kills. Yet I must think . .
for I am motionless. To think is to move when
one is motionless. Trees move forever. Leaf
and trunk move upward, circle out: seed moves
downward, inward. Trees swing forever so they
are thoughtless. But I am a broken curve, a
splintered part of a Circle I cannot see . . . My
thought's a finger feeling from the line of my
brokenness for a Roundness beyond me.

— What am I going to do? How am I going to
think?

She was the wife of Harry Howland Luve.
Pretty clever astounding Fanny Dirk: here's a
riddle for your independence, which we . . your
Town . . have had to swallow ever since you were
a child bossing your schoolmates, snubbing the
smart young men, running through the gray-
mossed tangles of our thoughts and ways like an
April wind through a sleepy August. You have
shocked us, angered us, made us love and accept
you. You caught the best match of Town . . here
is a riddle for you, smartie Fanny Dirk!

He will come back: she was very quick to find
her own way, her own words for it: yet who of
us dare say she was not always the lady? Mrs.
Harry Luve. He will come back. Nothing for
her after all but to sit and wait him. . . .

She had a dream. Her bed was a vast blackness.
—It is white, I have no eyes so my bed is black. It
\vas soft and rich, it was comfortable. She lay
within it, folded, lost, and it was white vast com-
fort all about her. A Hand from a sharp wrist

33

thrust down, clasped her throat . . pressed. She
was pressed deeper within the bed: as the Hand
pressed down her throat was deep beneath her
body, deep beneath her head: her mind and her
blood rushed down from her head and body to her
swollen throat that a white Hand pressed. The
bed unfolded lip within lip as had her body when
Harry loved her : now her body cut deep into the
bed . . enfolded it was lost in the bed's blind
comfort. . . She saw the Hand that pressed her
down by the throat. Upon one finger was the
ring of Harry : upon another finger was the wed-
ding ring she had worn secret for a year, and
was the diamond ring set in platinum which he
had given her later. The Hand was colorless like
the shell of a departed locust. The wrist above
it was long and red and moist. The Hand, pin-
ning her throat, was dry, her throat was dry. She
lay there cased in her hot bed . . frozen: under
a Hand that pinned her.

She got up. She went to her child and held her
in her arms, Edith slept. She held her close
against her breast. She stiffened her arms in
order to be still. Within, a voice shrieked:
"Wake, wake!" It touched the air through her
hardened nipples. It touched her child. Edith
awoke. She placed her back in her crib.

"Sleep, daughter . . always sleep. "

Saying these words, she felt her gums were
hard; it was her gums, it was her teeth that said
them. Her lips were still! She kissed her
daughter.

—Lips had better kiss.

34

The child, who had lain wide-eyed silent, fell
asleep. . .

Fanny stood beside her bed. It loomed like a
white sucking mouth — white lips. She pulled a
quilt away, sank to the floor. With knees high
huddled in her arms, near her chin, and the quilt
lightly touching her bare toes, her knees, her
mouth, she slept on the floor. The world's black-
ness, the ghost-grained night of her sleep was not
the world, not her sleep . . was the bed above her.
Blackness was spun white threads come to rest:
each thread beside the other, each thread of white
not touching any other. She lay escaped from
her Bed in undulant hardness, she flowed . . at
last at rest . . like a red worm through water. . .

— At this Party too, they aren't going to let me
be gay !

All they would not let her. They smiled on her
and carefully patterned their talk. They had eyes
forever wiping against her thoughts. They must
have hated her, had she been gay and forgetful
of her loss. They did not want to hate her. They
preserved her low and broken where they did
not need to hate her. "Dear poor Fanny — so
bravel" Their words and their ways announced:
"We try to be gay with you, we try to make you
gay." They would not let her be gay. They
hoisted their talk uphill against the evident pull
of their sole interest in her, of their solemn com-
passion for her. They would not let her forget.
"We are being gay, we are trying to cheer you up.

35

We are talking with you of indifferent matters. ' '
So. . . .

Fanny waited . . here too. In these bright con-
gestions of men and women was there not surely
somewhere a color that went with her own, a tone
that could make her vibrate ? She* waited in stiff
rigor, not knowing she waited. . . Gowns and
shoes . . words put on like gowns and shoes over
different flesh. She smelt at times under satin
and starch warm flesh that needed air. She sat
and let herself be talked to, be sympathized with,
be gloated over. — If only you'd shout you are
glad! Healthy that, naked . . 0 no. She was
stiff as in death.

A tall man, dark . . . — Newcomer, strange . .
moved up to her and spoke. Words not spawned
or swerved by her own story: words she needed
not to hear since they were fending away a world
that would not let her be gay. In a new separate-
ness Fanny felt herself. . .

Felt herself laughing.

Found her feet, after his quiet resolute own,
pattering out to a seclusive alcove.

She saw him. — I don't size you up. I don't
care! You release my feet and my laughter.
You are big strong . . black . . what are you?

He came to her home.

Her ears did not count, yet her ears did for
they had given her a label to stick on him so he
could pass through her door . . . Leon Dannen-

36

berg — attorney from Washington — Government
lawyer — on short business here. He passed
through. More than her eyes saw that he was
very strong with hands full of ease. She leaned
back in her rocker : her toes jutted forward : they
twinkled against his black strength.

They chatted, she had no ears, she had voice.
She was gay.

When he left her: "You are unhappy, Mrs.
Luve," he said. "I think you are the unhappiest
woman I have known. You must be strong, then
. . too."

She took his hand and liked how her hand was
lost in his hand that was full of ease.

"You let me be gay."

"I'm coming whenever this Case . . and these
Conferences . . let me."

"I have respect for you," he said. He took
her in his arms and kissed her. . .

He said: "We are strangers . . we are
strangers who respect each other."

"Help me," he said.

"Help you?"

"Help me to bring you to yourself. You are
stunned. Ill things come over you and you are
stunned, you cannot make yourself clean. ... I
want y^ou naked. Help me. Naked against me
naked. You will be at last yourself . . inviolate.
Help me!"

He undressed her. She helped him to undress

37

her. She lay in his arms : lost sweetly like a tree
in a warm wind.

"You make me feel that I have roots, " she told
him.

She found that she had been buried in a corro-
dent silence. She was lifted forth. She had
words.

"You are strong," he said, "and you have been
a fool."

Holding her in his arms, he was to her a sun-
rise . cool . . cutting mists and a dim sleep. She
lay in him like a warm creature in a gentle sun,
sucking sun . . all open.

' ' Soon I must go . . back to Washington . . my
home."

"You have a home?"

"Why do you doubt it?"

"You are so strong away from home."

"You are a glory, Frances Luve. You are a
spirit like a tree,, standing alone on a single rock
in a marshland."

"That is what you think of my people?"

* ' That is what I think of your people. ' '

* ' But have you a home ? ' '

"The Western World," he smiled with a fine
bitterness that hurt her. "I am a Jew, you
know. ' '

"Yes . . I know," she hushed.

38

"The first Jew you have ever known!"

"The first . . "

"Do you know me, Fanny ?"

"Will I ever know? . . You are going away."

"That is right, also."

"Yes." She looked at him. She sat high above
his prone strong body; looked at him. "Yes, it is
right. I look at you. You are beautiful You
are clean . You are wilful and straight. You
have black curling hair like a savage dance all
over the white tenderness of your body. You
have eyes that look forever. Yet I do not love
you. I love my husband. He is weak and dirty.
Until you came I said: 'He is weak and dirty, I
hate him.' You came with your clear strength.
You took me naked. I took you naked. Because
I have taken you clean and strong I know that it
is he whom I love."

He held her hand.

"There is God," he said, "May he bless you."

"What does that mean . . if He blesses!"

"The Jews in three thousand bloody years
have not found out. ' '

' ' I tell you I do not love you : I tell you and you
bless me."

"I reverence you, Fanny. You are clear like
water. Love is a word I have not won the use
of."

"What have you done to me!"

"You are water, Frances. You were muddied
and thick. You can look down, now, through the
clearness of yourself, to the dirt base of your-
self ..."

39

" . . to Harry!"

"See him clear, through your own clean-ness."

"You are strong. 0 how strong you are, you
man who have won for yourself a power in the
world that hates you. Your people have
been beaten bloody: always, always. Beaten
bloody by their God . . beaten bloody by the
world to which they gave their God. They are
a bent dark people. Yet you have won for your-
self a body fair to see. Never shall I forget your
lovely body. Yet I do not love you. I love a man
who had all and who cast it away : who was fair as
you were never and who has dirtied himself."

"He only deserves your love."

"Why that?"

" . . if you care for him. ' ' He took her hand
again. "Since you care to care for him." . . .

"Good-by," he said.

She said: "The word Love is never in your
mouth."

"Good-by, "he said.

She said : "I will do what you want. . . I would
do always what you want. I do not love you : but
I bow to you. I kiss your feet. You are holy . .
Why are you holy?"

"I have moved you only as a wind that passes. "

"You are putting me aside," she said.

"No. I touch your branches. I spread them.
I take seed of you with me to the fallow meadows.
I do not stir your roots."

"They feel sunshine for you have spread me
open."

40

"I do not stir your roots — because I have re-
spect for the word Love."

"Good-bye, then, Leon. I shall find out what
this great truth is . . this truth I know, the first
truth I have ever known . . that you are holy."

' i Good-by, ' ' he said. Then he went.

Mrs. Luve looked through the golden flame of
an old table, of two candles, burning within the
blackness of her room. There . . not of the mellow
flame, not of the dark . . a young man speaking
of small matters. Where the flame touched him
he glowed ; where the night touched him his body
withdrew harsh into shadow. What is this en-
caverned boy, talking of small matters I

—He is plump : he is a boy : he has no strength
of his own. He is very strong and he is very old.
Blond hair curls from bland brow. They are
Jews . . he was straight like steel, hard, sure.
So gentle. Sureness alone is gentle in a fumbling
world. . . Arc you hard also?"

— You do not know, but I have seen your par-
ents. If I said so would you flush? would your
heart rush back in panic, hide in your flesh I have
touched by seeing your parents? She counted
me change so soberly . . correct, correct . . 'If
I make a mistake against you I will lose by and
by : if I make a mistake against me I 'lose now. '
The greed of justice in your mother counting me
change. That time when the clerks were all busy
and I in a hurry, your father came out smiling,

41

sold me — what was it? — sausage and cheese? So
simple, so condescending he was. You are the
child of such parents. They have saved: they
have saved in justice of greed, in justice of con-
descension: and of this saving of their greed and
arrogance, you buy your College books, you buy
your poetry books, you buy your hours here.
Aren't you ashamed? No he is not ashamed. He
is right. Sausages and dollars saved are slime,
are lies. You are true, Samson Brenner. You
are older than your stinking parents.

She filled his glass with wine.

He sipped. His eyes were hot amber in an iron
vat. He asked no question, he sipped.

"Do you want to hear the poem?" he said.

—I hear it already. "Repeat it."

He did not question her words, he did not ques-
tion her wine. He took them. His head bent for-
ward. He held his face in his hands . . . soft
hands. He spoke his poem through soft hands.
The poem was a stiff, an alien thing: but her
words she had not spoken in the glow of his face
were his and came back to her, a poem.

— I become myself. I become untouched. Speak
on, Boy. Make me untouched ! ... He has young
eyes — the shadows that rim them are marked by
thousand years. . . .

THE world was a sunny field and the young
mother walked in it and was herself. Each
thing was itself, stood clear up in the
sunny field of the world. Black ant over a tuft of
grass held the sun in its blackness. Grass threw
sparkle of sun against a blue sky dazed with sunni-
ness. — I too walking and carrying the sun. I am
very sharply myself, like an ant, like a leaf, throw-
ing with them the sun in a vast gold shower up-
ward into the sky . . .

Leon was gone : there would be no word of any
sort further between them.

Fanny had a way of sitting on her porch and
pinching the flesh of her bared arm. Solid ! She
loved her solidness — I am real! She was sunny
with feeling her flesh and her soul real.

— Harry is coming back. 0 I know ! I must be
ready, I must be real.

She was real. Her thoughts, her feelings, her
pain were petal and stamen and pistil of the full
flower of her realness. Sitting now, different, in
her little house where she had been abandoned . .
above the pry and the impudent concern of those
about her, above the hurt and the insult of
Harry's going . . facing the sacrament of his re-
turn— how? beaten, broken? — fully as she had
faced no truth in all her life.

. . With her child in arms she could pinch
bravely and find real. . .

43

— I can kiss you now — Baby! little sister! — we
wait together for him who is coming back.

— Coming at last. For the first time coming.
There was a holy man. He released us, stripped
us naked to ourselves. And because of a holy man,
we can wait real now, sure, intact, so gently wait
and so long, for a man who is coming.

— We need not ask who he is. He is ours. He
will find us and love us, won't he, little sister? . .
and leave us no more.

—Like you ! 0 my blessed baby — like you whom
I was strong enough to bear, not strong enough
till now to look upon — like you he is ours.

— 0 the black night into which you were

born, my child.
0 the long pain you stood upon : it rose like

a flame from my womb you stood upon

. . up, up throughout you, to your eyes

and fingers.
O the black night of fiery pain you were,

with your sucking mouth upon my naked

flesh. . . .

We dawn together, Love, into a sleep where

with eyes open
Cooly we walk toward Day.

Fanny held her child and again she looked un-
wilted into sun. It was to her as if she gazed on a
bright field, and there above flowers, under a sky,
stood a woman sheer with a child in her arms.
Her feet in grass were cool. Her hair in sky was

44

cool. She was sheer, cool . . unburned by the
fires of birth. She was born . . washed clean of
the bloods of birth and born. Very cool, very
sheer. So Fanny saw herself.

. . Saw certain things making her sunny field
of the world — as the light of her vision lay clari-
fied in context of green thrusts running, forms
sprayed and ashift over earth.

She had long talks holding her child in her
arms. . .

"I must be more to him when he comes back
than I was ever ! I can be more !

"I accept you, Harry. I have no pride, I am
humble. I challenge drink, gaming, women. I am
ashamed no longer. I shall beat them. I shall
crowd them out. I shall be for you what they
lied seeming they could be for you. You will find
me everywhere, meet me nowhere. No obstruc-
tion. You will find me risen in a great pride, in a
great strength, now that my pride is gone and I
have lain, prostrate naked, sucking the strength
of a stranger."

— O stranger! not a thought more for you.
Not a thought. That is as you will. Harry, he
made me love you.

She went into her room, stripped her clothes
from her shoulders. She looked in a glass at her
nakedness, feeling under her eyes her shoulders
gleam like cool flames upward.

It was strange : her shoulders were untouched,
her breasts had not fallen. — I am whole ! Come,
Harry, take me.

There had been a wind, there had been a bath

45

for her naked shoulders. She was naked, flushed
by a swift wind . . gone . . cleansed by a run-
ning water . . run away. — I am whole, I am
born. Will you come, Harry, so you can see the
woman who has been born?

She stood long, looking at her naked self. She
was clad in a bloom. She was a hard young world
in its first Spring. She found that she was laugh-
ing. She pressed her laughing fingers into her
firm breasts.

"I am good/' she said, very sober. She caught
up her child. Cheek upon hers she swayed, very
still, very sober. "0 we are good. Good, we
two! Won't you hurry, Man?" . . . .

' i Now I see you. Clear ! Never has any woman
seen her love as I see you. I am a woman born.
Edith dear, look at your Mother. You are a child
born . . I am a woman born. I am rarer than
you ! I am very rare. I see you clear, you little
sucking flesh. Sweet, sweet! I see him clear;
wistful yearnful boy, with a soul all wrinkled and
athrob like your forehead, Sweet, when you were
born . . a soul open and empty and greedy like
your mouth, when you were born.

". . Come, suck me, you two dear ones!"

— Do I see my love clear? If I do, I see a fad-
ing. . . . "I abdicate that sight, my dear Be-
loved. My hands must not shake, when you come
back to me shaking."

— What is love? what is a field? . . a running
of sweet grass over earth, grass leaping away
from the earth in which it lives. . . My love is you
and you . . that is seeing enough !

46

— Love is the field and woodlands of the world.
She was a little woman waiting for her hus-
band.

Strange news came to her world of Harry How-
land Luve . . . thrilled it, made it talk. . .
" Blood will tell." . . " After the wild oats the
sturdier planting." . . "God has his way." . .
"From one drunkenness to another." Fanny took
to herself the news and felt it true. The path of
her man came clear in her white mind.

— I feel him, all the way he has crawled livid
red from my hands. He turns, full flow, to my
breast ! She saw his path like a writing.

The Reverend Doctor Poole brought her his
gift of comfort wrapped in complacence.

She made him sit down, he chose the stiffest
chair. —I must subdue myself, she felt. He was
brittle, little. She held back the flood of herself.
But it was easy since his sharp small eyes not
knowing she was a flood, brought her help.

"Your husband, my Dear, has found Christ.

"It happened in New York. Never mind, my
child, where . . and who shall ever say How?
He has found Christ and like Him he has risen.
More, my daughter. Like Him, he is walking the
ways of men bringing God's word. Who has
found Christ truly, in every respect must act like
Him. I am very gratified . . very grateful. I
have come to you, my daughter, . . you have neg-
lected our Church, never mind, Dear, the strayed
sheep is the dearest to the Lord and to the hum-

47

blest Pastor . . to pray with you Thanksgiving
and rejoicing. Your husband will be here soon.
You know from his dear father what he's doing?
. . He goes from College to College telling young
men how he slipped down the pleasant path to
Hell — and at its gate found Christ ... I have
had word from colleagues, in Princeton, Yale,
Williams . . elsewhere. His effect on the stu-
dent bodies is amazing, electrifying. A true
evangel. He is eloquent, simple . . rather his
message is, that speaks through his lips. The
students learn how he . . as they do . . played a
little, drank a little, smoked — all the little inno-
cent indulgences . . and what horror happened.
They flock up, after his visit, and sign the pledge
of Purity, join fellowship in Christ. He has re-
ceived invitations from dozens of Christian insti-
tutions to come with his message, to help save our
Christian youth. He has found a true work, in-
deed. . . And you, daughter, have been worthy of
him . . waiting. Prepare yourself now for the
return of your Bridegroom."

Face clawed close by myriad tiny fears and
horrors. Hot eyes. Feet stumbling. As Harry's
body lurched forward, his feet stumbled faster to
support it. Hands dead white leaves, dry, crack-
ling at his sides. . . A saloon swings open, his
head bowed above thin shoulders twitches in,
away from the crash of an impending train above
on its swinging iron rail. "Wave of acrid beer,

48

soiled flesh, wet clothes. Above it, his head a mo-
ment is still. . . . Sober. Harry steps up to the
bar, with sharp feet and hands marshalling sud-
den to his head against the lazy swing of his body
within the fetid wave. He grasps a glass of whis-
key, carries it untouched before him to a corner.
Bodies huddled like hulks of beef or pork, cov-
ered with rags. He floats above them, finds a seat,
bowing to a naked wooden table. Invitation.
Glass elbows on the naked table. Head on the
table? No! — One gulp to swing my body free
^dth my sharp head . . to soberness. . . So . . .
—What am 1? . . . .

Harry Howland Luve gazed on his world. A
man snoring near him blew a spray of blood from
his mashed nose. A man, beside a barrel, let his
fingers trail like grey worms through the saw-
dust ... a red tongue broke through the muck of
his mouth, licked the grey worms of his hands, he
slept again. At the bar, careening like ships on a
wave of the world, heads dipped into huge glasses,
swung against mirrors, broke thudding upon a
window upon a wall that was a grin of hardness.
— What am I? Harry Howland Luve laboriously
counted his fingers. . . — One two three four . .
one two three four . . one two : my God! where is
my fifth finger ? "I lack a finger ! I lack a finger ! ' '
Body with head feet hands was one . . a toss, a
catapult from the stinking Harp House into a
darkness clear, biting, without, beneath the surge
of the "L." He flew. "I lack a finger." He
stopped. "What else do I lack?" Again a train.
He was caught. He could not move. — It is com-

49

ing over! He was clamped; the train's murmur
rose to a beat, a roar, a crash. Iron and wood and
steam shrieked and stampeded, mountained on
his head. He was clamped. He was a silence of
horror under a mountain of noise, crushing-
against the eggshell of his skull. ... It passed
. . . — I am alive. He walked quiet now, looking
on the pavement tracks for his lost finger.

"You have lost something?" A black form
rose from the street like smoke on a clear night.
"Yes . . I have lost . . have lost . ." "Per-
haps," said the smokey man, "I can help you to
find. Come along, Brother. ' ' He clasped his arm.
The smokey man of God, the white seeker of
color moved down the cavern of Chatham Square
where the high houses dimmed away like stalac-
tytes and the "L" thrust its lance into the belly
of a world too weary to cry, too worn to bleed.
Before him Harry Luve held his white dry hand.
"My finger," he muttered. "Yes," said the man
of God. "I see . . your pointing finger . . ".

He sat in a quiet room. Coffee and a sand-
wich rolled in his raw stomach. i ' That tastes good,
eh?" said the man. of smoke. "Hot, eh? Whis-
key makes you shiver, I'll bet." Luve held his
hands together and began to cry. "Heat is the
best thing in the world. Good heat is God. False
heat is the Devil . . and makes you shiver," he
said. i i Another cup of coffee ? ' '

"My finger . . my finger!" "Brace up, man.
You're a gentleman. You were. I can see that.
See clear, and you're whole." . . . "How can I

50

see clear when I lack . . I lack — " . . . "Hush —
listen. "

There was a sound like a soft white quiet on a
red wound. Music.

"Bow your head, Brother . . . Listen."
The quiet crept upon his body. Tucked in his
toes, moistened his hands, lay on his mouth. The
quiet was warm. "Was music. Harry shut his
eyes. The wave of the world, booze and streak-
ing men, fell away. He was in a flatness downy
with gentle grass above a gentle river. His feet
hurt, he was glad, hurting was living. A warm
cloud muffled his head: through his eyes and
mouth, through the warm cloud came words :

"Our Father which art in Heaven ... thy
Kingdom . . give us this day our daily . . not
into temptation . . for thine is the Kingdom . .
halleluja, Blesst ! . . the glory for ever and ever
. . seek and ye shall find . . seek seek and and
ye ye . . unto you opened . . unto you, opened . ..
Blood of the Lamb, red blood, . . there is a quiet
house, all white, where it is warm this bitter Win-
ter night . . all warm a quiet house . . and arms
holding me to a redness, passion, that is allowed.
Allowed . . hallowed . . hallowed . . allowed.
Christ smiles on it, his blood is red and holy . . .
Fanny's red, I have seen her red blood. Since I
have married her, holy . red and holy . . knock
and it shall be . . opened . . red warm, dear . .
all white is the blood of the Christ. . . "

The smokey man was speaking: "Miracle is not
dead."

51

Harry Luve rolled around upon his face. The
music was still. A new quiet, also warm, wrapped
him about. He rolled and rolled in a warm water.
"The quiet is ever' where."

His eyes gleamed against a blackness suddenly
calm and dun, a wall. He looked at a wall in a
lighted room. He saw a man beside him clad in
black. A hand touched his. Harry was thankful
how that hand touched his.

"I have seen," he said, " . . O I have seen — "

The hand clasped his. "What, brother, have you
seen?"

Harry wrenched away his hands, placed them
like fenders before him.

"Let me — let me — I" he stopped. He swayed
caught : he flew caught in a chord that sped with
the bright room through a roaring darkness.
Roar! He was dizzy. He tried to cry. He saw
his hands speeding before his eyes like two birds
through cavernous space. He stopped from breath
. . one two three four FIVE . . he counted his
flying fingers. A tiny spring sang over his eyes,
sang fraying ready to break. He wanted to cry
. . five five! . . a little woman flew before his
hands like a white bird in the blackness. Naked.
One red spot in her naked body where he had
made red once . . Fanny! . . warm . . allowed.
Hallowed allowed hallowed allowed. The red spot
was a painted house home . . could be about him
. .Blessed are they that mourn . . blessed are they
that mourn. Blessed are the poor in spirit . .
comforted . . Kingdom of Heaven lead us not . .
rejoice exceeding glad . . into temptation

52

" — Warm and sweet is the blood of the Lamb
That washes its sinners white.
Sinners sinners
Black and quivering sinners we
And the blood of the Lamb it warms us
It washes us sinners white""

. . The hand of the man in black touched his
again. Smokey . . flame. Warmness, red warm-
ness, white from hallowedness. The tiny spring
burst. His eyes burst out into myriad diamond
stars. A sluice opened. He was all wet His soul
poured . . a pent torrent . . out: speechless
whiteness.

"Something — say something, Brother! What
wrestles in you! What chokes you! What do
you see?"

" Christ!" gasped Harry Howland Luve: then
he slept.

53

MRS. LUVE leaned back in her chair, took
the brimming words of Samson Bren-
ner.

They poured from him, free, full, into the dark
pool of her eyes. They poured bright, candid : in
the dark pool they fell dark.

— You talk of your fears and your pains: you
talk of your loves and your dreams. You are a
Jew, you are true. Why is the word Christ never
in your mouth?

— 0 there is reason, deep ! What is the pain of
nearness — you pampered Jew, you Jew-boy,
plump about sorrow — that blots the word Christ
from your mouth?

"Mrs. Luve, I forget myself. I talk. I lose
myself, there sudden I am. I do not know myself,
but I say 'that is me!' — Pampered boy. "I
talk and talk. God knows of what and why. Mrs.
Luve, do I bore you?"

"You move along a path that is mine. Go on.
I have no earthly thing to do but hear you."

"You are grave!"

"Not so grave as you."

"But I laugh. I must tell you . . the first time
I really heard laughter ..."

— You move upon my life like a broken sun
ashift through cloud at evening after a black day
. . . You in the flame of my candles, you in the

54

black of my room. . . What is this word Christ
you know too deep to utter ?"

Fanny standing moved her handj from the gath-
ered flowers on the table . . cherry and pear buds
high, bowls of anemone, violets . . to her lips.

*' l He is coming ! ' ' She stood.

The door thrust forward — and was away from
between them. Clad in white she held firm
against the sight of him; tall and dark with pale
hands and face, he rose from her still eyes like a
column of smoke.

" Harry!" Then she held out her arms.

He shut the door. He knelt.

"Get up, husband."

He kissed her hands.

She lifted his head in her two palms, lifted him
up. His lips were on hers.

They were thin, sweet, laden now with little
gasps of air warmed sweet in sweet lungs: no
smells of liquor and smoke like a hot corrugation
scraping her sense.

He broke from her and sat in a chair. His
breath was sudden, he had run a race. One hand
lay palpitant against a knee : breathless, afraid, a
being out of its element. She thought of a sea.
He was fished up dry from a sea.

' ' Harry, ' ' she spoke low. She knelt at his feet :
she looked up : she could smile now.

"Get up, wife."

"No . . let me. Let me always."

55

His dry hands, tremulous, waved about her hair :
seeking, afraid: they were moths now, fluttering
upon a light: so his eyes. His face was pale and
hurt turned down upon her smiling. Fluttering
search collapsed. He hid his face in his hands.

"Do not cry now." She felt shut out by his
hiding hands.

"I do not cry. Instead, I pray."

He looked at her. All of him was dry. From
his words he seemed to have won bravery. She
felt shut out in his looking.

His eyes were braver : his hands. They moved
forward upon her shadowing face : they sought a
thing, found it. They carried her mouth upon his,
differently, upward. He stood, she under him.
Her flesh touched his flesh.

Tall white flesh, scabbarded in black . . and in
prayer. Lips washed clean of liquor, scrubbed
lips, thin . . very thin. Hands corroded in clean-
liness against the nape of her neck. Odorless,
tireless. . . Fanny flung her arms about him. . .
Shoulders pointed forward, thrusting away a
world. She clasped him close.

" Harry — Harry," she cried. "01 am so glad

you are " she stopped. She lay swaying in

his arms, clasping him tighter, tighter. A faint
moan rose from her parted lips as her arms
clasped tighter. . . .

They sat and looked at each other.

"You have loved me, Fanny."

"Yes . . yes."

"You are my wife."

She could say no word. She could feel no thing

56

to turn into a word. She was a wisp of cloud :
beneath her a weathercock stook still. Harry
moveless pinned like a weathercock upon a bloody
spike . . under a sky with one wisp of cloud.

From a fringed green horizon, memory like a
wind moved up to her.

— I love him. I serve him. I have dedicated
my new free strength to that. I have sworn how
I was wanting, how I failed. Life now together!

"You know about me," he said.

"I know you have come back, and I love you . .
love you."

"I must tell you all . . all the sin. You are my
wife."

"Tell me now, only that you are mine."

"I am yours: for you are my wife since in my
sinning you have loved me, Fanny. God rewards
me. You were there, awaiting my conversion."

"We are wedded at last. Do not use wordc I
cannot understand."

"You must hear all my sins . . "

Why did she feel: — He is satisfied with his
words?

"I know my sins. God has put upon me, as my
way of being cleansed, to speak my sins. As they
come forth from my mouth, they cleanse — God
has made a miracle in that they cleanse. I am
washed clean, speaking them. Already scores of
boys, young men, hearing them, are clean. All
their horror, each detail of my sins, is a hand
washing clean."

Why did she feel: — Speaking, he moves away!

— I am jealous of your sins. What are sins?

57
ERRATA

Page 57, second line from top, "stook"
should read "stood."

"Tell me at once, then, Harry. Then we can
bury them. Then we can start to build. Then
you can come and hold me."

"I was away more than two years "

— He has come back to hold me. . . I will hold
him so he understands he has come back to hold
me. . . O to be held! . . He has never held me.
We were too wise, we fools, to hold each other.
In a plunging world . . O my God how the world
veers and plunges . . what fools not to hold each
other.

He spoke, he was very eloquent and sure, dwell-
ing again with his sins. He was warm in them.
When he looked out from his hot sins to his wife,
his eyes were colder.

— Hold me. Hold me ! Let me hold you. Come
plant your hand in my heart. He spoke, dwelling
warm in his sins.

— Damn your sins !

He ended. He came to her and knelt once more.
Not feeling him, she let him.

"Fanny, my dearest, my wife, my wife . . do
you forgive me?"

Not feeling him there, she was very quiet.

"I do not feel, my love, that there is anything
to forgive."

She looked straight, a little to the side of his
white face. She was still.

"We were young," then she said. — I must
speak. "And did not know. All that is past, but
is good . . all . . since now we know."

"I have sinned deeply. Forgive me."

"You wandered loosely, because I held you

58

loose: because yt>u did not hold me. Now we
clasp each other close. It is not a sin to have
been a child."

' ' Bless you. Bless you. ' '

"I have learned "

"You have been always wonderful."

"No, Harry. I have learned. I have changed."

"You . . You have not needed to change."

She looked at him. "Two years you left me
alone : and before that two years you left me alone
while I was forced to live with a drunkard. Do
you think these years did nothing to me?"

"You suffered."

"And what might come of suffering!"

"Fanny, my Christian wife, you were strong,
you were not harmed by suffering. You remained
pure. You have been not changed, dear: tem-
pered."

"0 Harry, I am afraid . . so afraid of your
words."

"You are a Christian, dear, and do not know
it. That is why you are frightened by my
words. ' '

"You never saw me, Harry."

"Yes, dear, always. Under a mist, but always.
The mist lifted. Darling, I must tell you: that
frightful immortal night . . you and Christ . . I
saw you both at once together."

"You never saw me. You do not know how I
have changed."

"You love me?"

"0 my darling!"

"You suffered, waiting . ."

59

She put his hands together: helpless she beat
her hands against his hands clasped hard.

"You did not give up . . waiting, suffering? "

"I knew you would come back. I saw you, al-
ways, coming. Now I know that. ' '

' l Then you have not changed. For you do love
me, then."

"Harry, love to survive must change. "

"Dear, dear . . you were right. I have told my
sins. Each one. You have them all. You must
remember them all. Let me hold you now, in
silence"

"But Harry, perhaps I too have the need of
telling."

"You have no sin."

"No Harry, I have no sin. But there are other
tidings. ' '

"Hush, dearest. Hold me "

"Listen!"

He looked at her. Impatience bit his lip, puck-
ered his eyes slightly.

" . . Have you thought ever, Harry, of what I
did, these years of waiting? of what I was?
Harry, look at me clear. Have you ever tried to
see me!"

"My Christian wife!"

— Patience, patience ! . . . " Harry, this coming
home must be beautiful, it must not be hideous.
Give it your share of light, Harry. You must to
save it, to make it. Look at me. ' '

He puckered his brow: he suffered, looking at
her beauty he would . . now he had confessed his
sins . . have preferred to kiss. — All of you, hid-

60

den under your white prim dress ' "It is so long
since I have kissed you."

" Harry, your word sin, doss it cover up from
your eyes what you and I havy done? Am T .&iit,
dearest, to fear your word sin*"

— I want to kiss* you. You ,<>re my T *e to p have
forgiven me. I'm done wi'.h vice .der the, e the
right, by God! to kiss your'^ioir -/• Ther-

4 ' Your going away kille;! in was

near dead before you wen^urd _ ^c' away
killed me." ^ "V

"Forgivr me, I .say." <£t '

"Never! 'if you use W>£ word. Forgiveness,
sin . . they ;Te wrrds, Ba^ry, that cover up. You
killed me; yc.i dr^ not sip^ You strug T^d for life
and killed me. liat is^il. I struggled for life,
afte? your stru| **•$ had :iV0d me. C^n you im-
agine how I needx .1, aloij^ here in the louse with
Edith whom you hav ever seen,t, ^ struggle
against the death in " ' ' v » ^our going b\ ried me ? ' '

"Edith !" ' jf^f

<4She is asleep. Have you thought, Harry?"

He stood up. "What can I do or say? Yes I
have thought. It is that agony I brought to you
which I call my sin : it is my heartache for it, my
rushing back to you with hands imploring, that
cries * Forgiveness' You stop me."

"Harry you did not sin, because you needed
life. Always that comes first; our need of life.
I did not give you life. I don't know why, but I
did not give you life. You went elsewhere, fum-
bled. Now I feel strong. I feel now, Love, that
I can give you life. We can now, from our new

61

strength, at last give life to each other. If I did
not know this, I would never have seen you again.

"But Harry . . please, please understand! I
^ncjerstand your wandering, your hurting, almost
your kijornl? of yourself and of me . . in order to
find bren you Understand mine!"

1 < Wbn. ' ' ni mean, Fanny ? ' '

"I amT» love ^so- I am not . .1 do not want
to be <^at perT • • ^pptiness you call your Christ-
ian wiP- ~ VJ- iWed, I am all warm for you,
I am alF^.^ng^'fof1!- ^ because I too have strug-
gled ani lave wane "red . . in order to find
breath."

"What dct you mean?" /

She stood close to hira. "LooL it me close, my
love."

"What <io you mea^?5' Very slowly, his pale
white hands with thei a>lue veins curled up like
leaves in autumn, dry drying: fists.

"Do you feel how I KP^ you? Do you feel . .
O you must . . how my love now, that was a little
stupid g 'lish thing, has bloomed: how it is full
of blood, full of sustaining sweetness? Do you
not feel, Harry, how you have come back to a love
that will f ^ed you, that will lift you up until the
end ot years?"

' Yes . . I feel that. What do you mean?"

"That love is over the despa'r and death of our
past years as a tree is over the ground."

"Fanny . . I . ."

". . rooted in it. I was under the ground.
That shows I loved you. Always, always. If I
had not loved you, I should not have been so deep-

62

buried under the ground. I was dead. That shows
I loved you. I am all open in the air, high to you.
That shows I love you. Love for you lias never
stopped, it has grown. "

"What do you mean . .?"

' ' There was a thing that hqlped me to pueh up
from my despair, from my death under the ground,
where you had buried me, H^rry. There was a,
man. . ."

Harry Luve stepped forward and viced
wrists: "A man — !"

"Harry dearest, you must let^. j<3 now, me
tell you all about it. ' '

He stopped her. * l One thing <• nly . . This
— " His voice broke. He droppt d her wrists,
face was an ashen mist. ' ' For (1 )ci 's sake, Fanny \
You didn't . . you didn't, Fanr- : — "

His eyes saw her. Saw Jie* f^ce. Her fact*
nodded.

His hands covered his facfc. Ho flinched $way.
He saw her not. He went back back . . the wall
caught him. He crumpled to re floo; He lay
under his white hands. Lay lo*""" ,, .

At last: -£•

"Harry, Harry . . it was tecause I loved you.

0 the hurt ! See, I have killed you too. Because

1 loved you . . I too needed to live, for you had
killed me. Do not judge yet. Let me tell you, let,
me help us understand. I heard you . . your
horrors, your orgies, your hells. O Harry, this
was not so . . this was clean somehow . . leading
to birth, to you. It was, since I am here now,

63

loving you . . ready to give you all, all of a life
I have at last won to give you. 0 my boy. . . "

With each word she crept closer, sank nearer
beside him. She knelt beside him. She sought
his hands, his eyes . . his eyes. He saw her face
hands eyes kneeling beside him who was crumpled
beyond her. . . He saw not her face, not her
hands. He saw white thighs, white, wide, very
soft, very penetrable . . hers . . darkly penetra-
ble ; they were fie stuff of his flesh, they were the
stuff of his brain and they were pierced by some
one! . . He saw rootflesh of a man . . not he!
piercing the stuff of his brain.

He got up. Her face was still low where his
face had been. Eer face was near his feet. His
feet touched her f ice.

"Our Lord has spoken," he said, "and I throw
no stone."

She was very still, her face low above his feet.
Listening with a f rm stillness her body was hard
and she held her face above his feet.

"Our Lord ha^spoken further! — 'But I say
unto you, that wl ^soever shall put away his wife
saving for the c^ $e of fornication causeth her to
commit adultery.'*' So has said our Lord."

She was moveless.

"V'^iat do you mean?" she said.

"Rise up."

"Let me here, dearest, try to tell you all. Try
\> tell yoii what I know now I must : how I was
helpless, hoV I was poisoned dead . . how I was
lifted up."

"Get up."

64

"0 Harry, Harry . . I have killed you, too."

"Get up, I say."

She lifted her face, furrowed with tears, to his.

"I did not choose, Beloved, the Way I was
saved . ."

"Do you put that on God? or on Christ who
has spoken against you?"

"When has He spoken against me?" Fanny
Luve stood silently before him.

"He has spoken against you . . even He. He
has said: Cast no stone. No stone shall be cast
by me. He has said: Put her away . . "

Her hands clenched under his mouth.

" — and I put you away."

"You put me away !"

"I put you away . . Not for myself. I must
travel. It is my mission to travel from College
to College. I must be away much from my home,
bringing where I can to my brothers the Word . .
the Word of our Lord who puts you away. I put
you away . . for the sake of my child."

"Whom you have never seen!"

"Whom you shall never see — r"

65

THREE

WHITE SKY

FANNY DIRK LUVE stood on the Bridge
where she could see the river up and
down.

—I know what I am going to do. I know. Not
die. Not going to see — What can I — ? Since
she knew, "Why! Why!" she said aloud.

She searched the world trying to find the an-
guish— I am not going to die ! . . of what she was
to do. — Why not? But she knew that. . . Not die.
Not see her child. . . She saw the river.

The river came to her from trees. The city, a
raised shadow near her eyes, pulled her eyelids
down away from there beyond, where she lay once
on her back. She lies on her back. Under : grass,
roots thrusting in erection, spilling in bud. Over :
he. . . From these trees came the river . . .
from this past . . flowing like the dimension that
was time upon her standing on the Bridge. Time
and the river were one. It swept upon her from
the past of trees, past of sweet love, thrust against
her, surging resistless ; it was going to overwhelm
her. Where? Time and the river flung in a stroke
eternally sure against her standing dry in anguish
-—love an edged steel — on the Bridge. She turned.
It turned her. Time and the river sweeping from
rootage and trees struck her now in the back. She
saw where it flowed.

It flowed into flat land. A rugose strewing of
rust and yard and factory was the flat land. The

69

city in the heights fell down from its proud man-
sions— through dawdling soiled cottages, through
clustered shanties — fell to the flat land of rust and
coal. Slow brackish river here, turmoiled . .
full. It swirled in oil, it recoiled from the harsh
thrusts of the makings of men — of junkyards.
Eiver and time stole through this newness of noise
and filth away, in a filmy scarf of smoke-bitten
locusts, beyond the eyes of Fanny. She felt in her
back the subtle thrust of a beginning world of
high-banked trees free in the air : how it fell, grew,
now hurling through noise, dirt, misery — making,
struggle to make ! — to beyond her eyes that lay so
wistfully against the dying locusts, unable to fall
farther.

And at her side the city fell along. From its
secluded shadow — warmed mansions fell with her
along into a rising clatter of smoke, a foam of
steel, huddling men moving. . . Mist.

Black-purple mist . . red rust . . the shriek
of wheels crunching resistless against and upon
steel lines thrust resistless also.

Fanny left the Bridge. . .

In one hand of Fanny was a valise. Her other
hand was a fist.

Her mouth asking for a ticket shut fast. Her
hand counting change shut fast. She sat in a train,
shut.

The moving train worked at her, stole up in her,
swayed, shook, pried her open. Her feet in the

70

opening rhythm of the train. Her legs. Her loins.
Warm loins. Breasts, not so frozen, melting. Her
head, erect on her frozen breast, now plunged in
their melting She sat in a train, open. . . She
lay in a hot bath of her melted pain and life, flow-
ing within it, open.

She had no sense of a world of objects — frag-
ments to beat against her. She was all melted
hot. She had a sense of the whole world . .
whole worlds . . all . . falling. The train fell
sure, it was sure of itself in its fall. It fell with
the world it held so sure, so steadfast; it was a
blessing so. She had the sense of the whole world
falling in a stark cadence upward upon God.
Tears, battle ecstacy of loss . . a falling some-
how upward upon God.

Her hands gripped the plush arms, shrill sharp
against the quick of her nails. The world was her
world again, and was a delirious tangle of broken
objects hurling against her eyes. She was bruised
and aghast in the rain of broken objects of her
world. But that which she had sensed in the melt
of worlds remained. All fell upward . . let her
pray! — can I dare? . . fell upward upon God.

— I am falling away. Grappling, crying, she
saw at last how real was this falling away from
the whole warm world of her sorrows and joys and
wants. — Edith, Harry, myself, 0 Edith my
heart! It is true. Can I fall upward? . .

The fast train seemed to be running over her
life. It ran over an earth full of flying fragments.
Over houses, fence snapping, cows dipped sudden
into trees, pool flaring skyward, cloud-full, caught

71

in the porch of a house, road ribboning a tobacco-
field, shaken straight, road stiff like a rod flashing
away beneath her. —This is Virginia, this is I.
The fast train running over her life smoothed it
clear. . .

She could have remained and fought him for her
child, she could not. She could have remained and
won him . . repulsive . . she could not. She
moved upon a track that was there she sensed be-
fore her moving upon it. But Edith ! What sort
of a life is this, moving away from Edith? The
pain of her deprival was a thousand pains, gray :
a thousand gray birds circling her in mist. —I
am suffering, suffering. Can I stand this? The
mists cleared. She saw her Pain clear . . one
Pain . . one moment. Pain. She saw that it was
not a thousand pains, weeping in gray wings mist-
ily about her. She saw that it was Life.

Life solid and salient.

— What is this terror? What have I to do with
this terror?

You are within it!

. . Like this Virginia, an unbroken sweep,
broken alone by the unwonted stress of the dimen-
sion of moving. One can face solid. One has two
eyes and a mind for facing solid. . . She loved
her daughter. — I love you, love you ! More things
she loved. Not Harry perhaps, 0 yes>. . . the
warm dreams she had born in Harry. The house
around Edith. Clean beds, linen her own, the
kitchen where she came each day and the apron
she tied about her hips and the hips too she loved
which arms must circle she was sure of. Edith's.

72

Home, daughter, man . . why were they all de-
stroyed?
— But they have never been.

What have they been? . .. pool of my blood

of dream.

Stagnant and dead : pool of my clotted blood.
My dream's blood flows!

It was true. Bleeding to death? Bleeding to
birth? She did not know. But flowing.

"God, let me think!" The words came aloud.
— God, let me think! now silent. . . — Edith? Yes,
Edith was flowing alive. But Edith was not her-
self, not her blood flowing. Edith's blood flowing.
Let it flow for Edith.

Fanny sat shaken in a mother's storm. Help
for her child. Could her child flow first alone?
Where was the mother to help her? Father? Fan-
ny sat trembling. She saw him, as he oldens in
the cant moulds of his ideals Harry, pious, weak,
stale . . leading the life of her child. What did
she have of her father? — If she is like her father
let her rot ! But now would she not surely be like
him? She alone could save her child from that.
She alone could, who could not. . . The train ran.
. . Fanny saw the Town, it would be the world
of her child growing, of her child learning to live
in the world. World of such women! Edith's
blue eyes, open beneath the dimpled softness of
her brows, behold a world of such women . . the
only world ! Stiff brittle creatures, floating upon
the viscid surface of a stream they have no weight
to pierce. And their Laws: "Have no weight,

73

have no thrust that might pierce the viscid sur-
face of our stream. ' ' World of such men ! Liars,
builders of lies, men taught to pray to Christ and
to cheat their fellows, to cheat their women and
wear them . . trim them then wear them . .
taught to ignore half of the aching world that was
black. — Let me go back to Edith! 0 let me go
back! . . The train ran smooth. — You may
not.

Fanny faced thei dead of her heart. She felt
the world of her child clear, how it stank, how it
swarmed like an evil stinking weed sucking the
soil of God. She saw the blue eyes of her girl.
They stood upon a body, white and clear like a
flower: and all about, the Weed, swarming and
purulent with its harsh roots sucking soil, with its
hot leaves stealing sun. — What can I do? She
faced she could do nothing. Yet reasonably some-
thing. Fight . . pursuade. There was reason
with the cry of her mangled heart that there was
much she could do. Turn back. The train, racing,
swept her eyes upon a world lying folded in
myriad skies, a world solid, a world one with space
and stars . . space solid joined her to the stars
as her white body joined her eyes to her limbs.
One. And Edith within it, flowing her way. Ruth-
lessly hers . . — Let her blood flow for her.

Fanny facing the dead of her heart faced the
life of failure. She knew at last she could live.

The train swam into a strewing of neat flat
houses, cut across asphalt. A marble Dome in
sun rose above smoke of roofs. Washington ! . .
Leon's home. — I must change here. Every hour

74

New York trains every . . get there by, day,
though.

Fanny walked through a city incredibly neat.
— Very fine. Government world. Fine and dead.
It has not started to grow, it has not started to be.
It is easy and fine, like a nonexistence.

Her feet were heavy as if she were walking in
space.

1 i When, God," she said aloud, "do I begin to
think f"

She stood halted by a building. She knew which

building it was. He is inside! Of course

perhaps he is inside no longer. It was a gray pile
rising in numberless piddling columns to the white
of the sky. It was cold. She looked at it. "I am
not going in."

He was perfect in her. Why should she go in
to take from him perfection? She was afraid for
his perfection. — How can he be this holy man in
this grave? The Government Building stood like
an insolent lackey fending her off. It glared at
her and was very insecure and stupid within its
ruffles of marble. It strutted its turrets before
her like a vain proud bird. — He is perfect. He is
done. He is no more. He is buried here. She
felt a great need to see him.

She knew she must not. "I must seek you," she
whispered against the mounting marble, "differ-
ently."

She walked and knew that Leon Dannenberg

75

who was in each, of her steps, in each of her pangs,
in each leap forward of her blood was forever be-
yond her eyes. — Here you are, holy man. Where
am If There you are.

She walked away. A vast openness was upon
her flank, it ached sweetly as if her blood poured
through it. An open longing lay upon her flesh
as if she walked away from him who had given
her birth. — You are behind. Not so far behind
as Edith. Nearer, holy man. Farther ahead.

But as she walked the inept city, a scene came
and it filled her. She gave herself her scene fully,
voluptuously . . starving . . while the long
buildings passed her in a squad of uniformed dull
giants.

He is up from a wide desk. He says no word,
looking deep in her eyes. One instant doubt as
to the full free independence of her coming. Doubt
goes before the intelligence of her eyes. He took
her hands, very lightly, released them.

"I am going North. I am on my way North."

"How can I help you?"

"You have helped me all you can."

"He came back . . you told him?"

She nodded.
. . " He did not understand ? ' '

"How could we expect he should understand?

Would I? Do I? . . if this all was not

mine . . ?"

"It is good, Fanny Luve. Go ahead."

His face sudden is like a field under a sky of

76

longing: a sun came down; his face glows in ten-
der fe,ar: it shadows to resolution.

" You must go North. We can't understand. I
can see, you are going right."

"How can you see that, Leon?"

"No day since I left have you been far from
me. You come into my thinking, my dreaming,
into my sudden flying visions. You measure your-
self always with them, with the best of them,
Fanny. You measure full with them."

"What you have said I could have said."

His eyes came very near. They filled with tears
of her. He Iboked away.

i t But I am vague. 0 Leon, so blind ! "

"You are no longer afraid of being blind. You
are ready."

"Lean, what am I going to be$"

"We are no longer prophets . . save in our
lives. Live, Fanny.

"Leon, I could fight. . . I could win her, I
could save her."

"No, Fanny . . you are going to live."

"I . . and Edith?"

"You . ."

She walked with mouth tear-brimmed and open
out of her fancied words. She saw about her with
relentless eyes, felt with relentless feet, this hard
pavement, these hard houses, hard white sky. Out
of the deep scene came now upon her, as her mouth
shut, clearer and more solid than the stone city
his last words :

"You, Fanny . . not Edith, you . . are to live."

77

Clear feet carried body erect through the stone
city. Mother worlds in blood poured from her,
leaving white feet, white body, while the soul of
Fanny swooned in a ruthless knowledge.

78

FOUR
PAVEMENT OVEB EABTH

A MAN and a woman walked this day with
Autumn burning all about them. The
sun lay in thin cloud. The trees burst.

"I have found out, Fanny/' he said.

She was so shorter than he and her steps swifter
than his long lurches. She felt him from his broad
brown halfshoes upward . . big fleshly man,
somehow lithe, somehow gentle like song above his
crude-rhythming feet. And his hairy great hands
she felt — as when they were on her body like a
little child's, so helpless yearning, so imperious.

"I knew I should find out if I gave myself the
space to: that's why I brought you up here. We
came yesterday. This morning I know . . that
I have known since the day you came into the
Office asking for a job."

She laughed. — I can laugh !

"O I see your thought: * That's the conven-
tional phrase.' "

" . . from Christopher Johns!"

' * Maybe he 's been so durn unconventional these
forty years because he hadn't found himself. May-
be he feels, now he can look at last straight at you
and himself and understand, it'd be good to be
conventional : like rolling in warm blankets which
the hard days ' work has paid for. ' '

She felt the dissonance of her feet striking the
rutted road beside his.

"There must have been a frost last night."

81

"Look at that maple! It's a blazing red, be-
cause there was a frost. "

She looked. He was keeping step.

"I mean it, Fanny. It's nearly two years since
I've known you . . nearly two years you've
worked for me . . one year we're — well — lovers
though I fear the word for the rare wonder you
have given me — why, why? But now it is a blos-
som of knowing, a whole Spring of knowing,
woman! There has been Sylvia Frau, there has
been Sadie. I chuck 'em both, and when it is done
we marry."

"Jonathan! I want you to walk quiet . . miles
and miles beside me quiet, today all day — do you
understand? I am listening for something. "

She knew he would, clutching his stick behind
him in two fists.

Two years . . they tramped . . two years . .

— You are Fanny Dirk, Mrs. Luve. . . I'll
keep that name! And you have gotten tired al-
ready, tired of what if you look and face it you
will find all bundled and labelled in two years.
Labelled to know, Bundled . . to throw out!
That's clear, though the facing, the training of my
eyes and the opening of my mind to hold what I
face, is going to be hard. . . Here is an autumn
day and a dear man trudging so you are alone with
it. Day of glory, day of flame, day of death. The
leaves are singing for they are going to fall. The
trees are singing for they are going to sleep. The
world is a maze of trumpeting insects, loomed with
flutters of dry grass, trill of seed, for soon comes
snow stillness. 0 Fanny, once you were Spring-

82

time ! I hear a man talk blossom and I feel Sep-
tember. The bundles . . the labels . . two
years inventoried! Aren't you a business woman,
Fanny, earning two thousand a year ? A year . .
two years. Each year has a Spring and a Fall.
A third year might green if you burn away like
these trees.

"It is simply, " she whispered to herself, and
the man watched her mouth: "do I want to green
like these trees? . . When will I learn to think?"

She knew already what was to be.

She struggled only, she gave this full free day
in the air only, to know Why. Did not the world
have reasons? She had suffered losing two lives
that grew within her flesh. She had asked Why,
and in the questioning been rent away so even
these agonies were dim: they were worlds dead
like dim moons in the dawn of her adventure. And
that adventure was Why !

— Why shall I say No very soon . . so very
soon? Why am I going to leave the warm of this
dear man, the ease, the goodness of it all — why
am I going to push him back into new Emptiness I

She saw him that first day : his arms thrust out,
nervous arms, haggard hands, hair wet . . busi-
ness mem! this big bumping child, bumping in
Emptiness? Dear . . so good (she could see that
at once as of a horse and a dog all in one, and his
life a currycomb brushing wrong, a bone marrow-
less) : now, back he goes into worse Emptiness.
Why?

— Tell me trees. . .
I am not tired, I am rested.

83

In the arms of this man, with my face turned

away, I have rested.
I can bear what you tell me. . .
I am hard like you.

. . That afternoon, the ninth of beating about on
pavement until pavement tumored upward
through her legs, her bowels, her blood, stiffened
her brain . . that afternoon she had felt strong
again sudden. — So this is Business? this soft
flesh in the hard City?

"Mr. Johns, you must let me have that place, "
she told him very calmly.

The next day she hung her coat on the costumer
in the corner away from the open window. A grey
wall rose beyond eyes, shrill greenish white elec-
tric bulbs blazed, shutting them all together,
papers typewriter woman and desks and murmur
beyond : she found she wished to smile.

Solid New York ! Solid New York relieved her
burden of no base. She had visited New York be-
fore: she felt the City deep, having in that past
surface of her life beheld its surface. She sensed
an analogue. She too had not changed but had
gone down below her surface to a turmoiled depth.
Within still deeper was there not a quiet, as now
she sensed the Quiet of the City under its torren-
tial streets and its human million midges of fire
through stone? Thus New York welcomed her:
it was a place where people dwelt and had dwelt
long, so she could feel it was a place where people
dwelt. Her Southern City, . . almost as old, was
dead where old, was raw and unaccustomed where

84

it was new . . its industrial heart of smoke, its
outskirts of prim bungalows. Here was a City
one : the place she knew for such as she to come to.

— Such as I?

Loving New York so sudden above the agony
of her intimate deprivals, she said: "We are
something in common, you and I." She and the
wide solid City that untouched her frail and
bloody inwardness . . lifting her up to a light
where she could seek what this thing meant,
this I.

In the Office was Clara Lonergan.

When she spoke to persons, particularly when
she spoke to Clara, Fanny lost her quiet City:
New York became a pullulent pile, a heaving sur-
face above a boil of blood. So Fanny did not seek
out persons, she feared that City. — Do I not
need to seek myself? She feared the self that was
like it. But Clara, she knew at once, she was not
to avoid.

She saw in a glance that she was supposed to
remove her hat. She took a seat demurely, her
heart compressed and moving up and down as she
breathed fragilely. She felt how all within her
was fragile and was surrounded by a solid world.
Miss Lonergan smiled :

"I guess Mr. Johns will see about you pretty
soon," and went into his Office. Her smile alone
of the outside world also was fragile.

So Fanny sat demurely. Beyond her was a long
dark room filling with girls. She heard their foot-
falls in the hall : at times through the wired glass
of the door she caught faces . . face sallow hun-

85

gry, face angrily uplifted toward sun and laughter
by the means of rouge, face resigned in sweet de-
bility .. . That one will marry. As feet
cadenced the hard cement Fanny's heart fluttered.
The door swung; voices angled against the feet
and the door, escaping in this brief interim of
home and work in allusive herd-calls : Fanny felt
thrust away. Each voice and football thrust her.
She struggled to be back.

— I am of you, now, she argued to herself. A
little older than most. 0 in life so older! . .
But I am one of you now.

The door opening from the private Office called
her sharp up. Miss Lonergan came in, seated her-
self with fingers already rustling at her pad. Mr.
Johns loomed before her.

"Good morning. Good morning."

He stood with his feet apart and his toes turned
out. Fanny observed how his knees flexed inward,
how his legs aburst in their drab trowsers flexed
and gave her mind the same thought as his ruffled
hands and hair : made her smile.

"Well now," he was saying, "you two said any-
thing yet to each other? get acquainted yet? no
explanations?" He turned from the one woman
to the other. < ' You '11 be friends. 0 all of us '11 be
friends. What could be more companionable after
all than to engage in the business of soft drinks
. . making Delight Drinks for the thirsty
people . . "

Miss Lonergan struck a key of her machine.
Click, she smiled. — I can't wait for your non-
sense. Click clicket click. . .

86

' ' You see, * ' went on Mr. Johns, ' i the people get
hot and what cools em off is ice. But they wont
pay for ice. Not much ! Ice is ice . . nameless.
We don't furnish ice. They pay for our lovely
game of names," he handed Fanny a list. "So
we send the names in the liquid forms, to the
candy men and the soda men : and they put in the
ice: and the ice cools the people: and the people
pay us."

He flourished clumsily. His face glowed open
about his clear blue eyes. "Will you come, Mrs.
Luve?" His head serious now thrust back. "I
want to show you the girls you are here to take
care of."

"Why I live on Twenty First Street. That's
right near."

"Let's walk," said Clara.

New York was open letting the calm day in. An
afternoon of May . . made of the scent of far
young grass, the swayings of far trees, the slop-
ings of far hills . . lay above the streets where
Fanny and Clara walked: came down, feathery
certain into the open City, into their eyes and
limbs. They walked languorous through a sleepy
city lying like a brittle-kneed woman under the
loved day. The City glowed with half responses . .
new. The angle of a street falling away from the
straight street where they walked was a gesture
of pleasaunce. Above the clotted people the dim
houses leaned gently together, making a haze of

87

memory above the urgence of people. The streets
turned angles leisurely: a Square beyond them
was an invitation like a hand open or a mouth
relaxed, the swerve of the Elevated train on the
near Bowery was a stroke that caressed.

" You are from the South, I can hear that. Have
you been here long?"

" About a month," said Fanny.

* * I was born here. I wonder what it's like, com-
ing to New York."

"New York is easy to come to."

"Do people come here happy?"

Fanny did not want to look at Clara. The day
was lazy and round, falling into night. "Why
do you ask that!" she said.

"01 dont know . . I was just wondering —
why do they come to New York."

"Why did your parents come?"

"My father's family was starving in Wicklow.
Pa was a boy and no use at home ploughing more
fields for a grabbing landlord. So he came. He
wasn't happy coming. Mother I dont remember
very well, she came from a place near Pressberg
in Bohemia. She was so lovely always . . tall
and so sweet . . and always so tired. I guess
they were all just tired — her whole family came —
they couldnt keep still. I've been tired that way.
I'd keep moving and moving. I'd say to myself;
Now Clara if you'll just try and stop and sit down
you'll be better. I couldnt. Something like that
I've felt in all the foreigners. . . Czechs and
Dagos and Bohunks. . . I have ever seen. Some-
thing in 'em I guess got too tired to hold on, to

88

stay on, they had to move . . and there's Amer-
ica all ready, a chute like in the cowpens IVe seen
over in Brooklyn ready to swallow 'em up as they
come tumblin'. Heaven knows where those for-
eigners get their idea of us."

She was taller than Fanny, slimmer. — She
cant be more than eighteen. Fanny's heart went
out, clamorous, sudden . . stopped against a
strength and a maturity she felt. With her heart's
warmth she saw this girl.

Saw sharp against the day's languor the long
face, clear dark, with narrowing thrust chin from
the full mouth, cheeks high and delicate, brow
faintly curving and sheer beneath the black hair.
Saw in the soft fabric of her waist nervous elbows
thrusting outward always as she walked, against
air, against world. Saw the whole taut tender
body in a world less clear, ever less fair than her
dark freshness. Saw at last as they stopped:
"Well I go here. See you tomorrow" . . eyes
very black very large, dry and within themselves
like windows of soma hidden world having no
faith in the sun.

— I have lost what you have not yet begun to
make. Yet my hand is softer than yours ! Fanny
knew it was a thing which must change : that her
hand was softer. She walked the swirling Spring-
drunk dusty streets with thoughts of this girl and
her hand.

She had a room which she had come to love. It
89

was upstairs in the back of an old red brick house :
it was oblong, square-buttressed by its honest
doors painted white, its two wide windows and its
low grey ceiling. She had spent eight dollars to
remove the acid-red carnations blotching a sea of
green bars on the walls . . ("I want you to
scrape first, not paper over it") . . then clad
her room in a dull buff. The walls were bare.
The landlady grumblingly took out the wide iron
bed, leaving her a couch. The carved oak table,
the bastard Empire chairs were distributed to the
rest of the lodgers and replaced by plain ones
from the storeroom. She took off her hat, let
down her hair, put slippers on her feet and drew
a chair to the wind. The day was more darkly
textured but still clear. An ailanthus flaunting
half naked through its tinselly leaves thrust above
fence and tesselate brick walls between her and
the grey rear of a Church. Beside the Church, a
small house receded, built of the same dim sooty
stone. On Sundays, the sun vaulted the cluttered
roofs at just about the time that a hymn, many-
voiced, shone through the corner of the stained-
glass window which she could glimpse on the pro-
truding side. There was a little grass plot. It
was littered with dust and ash bits, fluffs of drift-
ing textile: but now sod pushed bravely up in a
dim green. On the high fence at the side away
from the Church, among clusters like sunrays of
iron spikes, clothes-lines were drawn. A servant
was busy taking in the wash.

The girPs arms reached up, loosed clothes-pins,
dropped her armsfull in a basket. The girl's arms

90

reached up. . . Fanny lost herself in the dull
cat atony. She was tired. She held her eyes be-
yond her. Dimly behind she felt a world she did
not wish to turn to : world where there were wash-
lines and a girl her own. . . Industrious, this
girl. A young man stepped from the kitchen door
of the house. The girl's arms, full of tableclothes,
suspended against her breast. He spoke to her,
she nodded : disposed her burden. She was bent
before him, he leaned down and kissed her. He
stepped back, his arms and hands and shoulders,
his feet and hips throwing out little splintery
signals of his panic. He wore the cloth of the
Church. Then the girl straightened, lifted her
hands to her broad hips and smiled. The little
curate 's splintering commotion melted. He kissed
her again. They went together into the kitchen.

Fanny sat very still. She felt that the muscles
of her throat and legs and chest were tense, hold-
ing her still.

—What is the matter?

The world dim behind her eyes bellied out . .
swallowed the cool grey scene before her of a
backyard, a flirting servant and a Church. A
Church ! Fanny swung around in her chair. She
was circled now by a world no longer dim. She
asked no question. Like one dropped sudden into
a sea, she swam.

She swam to get out. Not yet . . some day
. . she must swim in the other direction, away
from shore, away from shore . . swim, swim till
she sank. But something within her told her she
was not ready. This dullness upon her mind, this

91

fog fending her heart that was there since the
month she was gone : let it be there longer. Was it
beginning to part ?

— Why am I here? I am afraid to ask why I
am here. Solid New York, bear me up ! Longer,
your cold surface, lift me, hold me !

She swam to get out. She was up from her
chair. Humming a tune she did not hear or know
of, she lighted the gas : she clasped her short thick
hair and thrust it atop her head. The gas danced
hard on her eyes and her black hair. She lighted
her little stove: she put water to boil: she was
very busy swimming to get out.

And when she had drunk two coddled eggs and
eaten an orange, she took the blue cover from her
couch, folded it carefully away, threw wide her
windows: and with the light of the downtown
heavens falling in sprays and fluffs of murmurous
gold against her sombre carpet, she lay down.
Soon she slept.

Work gripped her. Mr. Johns was delighted

with her way of work.

"Dont kill yourself, Mrs. Luve."

She smiled wistfully. "I shant die."

He looked at her warmly. "You say that as if

you knew. "
"I know."
"Perhaps you dont know the deadliness of New

York."

92

"I'm not ready yet," she announced half to her-
self.

"You're a bad example," he caressed her with
bluff words, "of Southern indolence."

"I'm a New Yorker," she said and went back to
her girls.

Always she knew this could not last. Yet al-
ways life came easier, easier . . in its harsh
brusque work, in its biting flavor of intercourse
with Mr. Johns, with Clara.

Each night as she lay down to sleep, the ques-
tion stood before her: Why? A question like a
single point of steel piercing so many lives, pierc-
ing so many loves, all bleeding-spitted upon it.
But she slept quick. She slept heavy. In her
sleep, if it was parted at all, merely the Question
again, rising up, up, out of sight like an infinite
steel point: she was impaled on it: but bloodless
already. She lay there quiet, impaled. She had
no responsibility since she was bloodless already.
And in the morning, when she awoke there was
work.

She entered the Office a breath of wistful quiet,
a cloud of gentle moisture moving upon a sultry
day. All who were there unthinking were glad,
when she entered the Office.

Clara found herself glad when she was with
her. In the cooling dusk of summer they walked
homeward: at times they dined together: quiet
words went from each to each, no depths articulate
and yet there was a peace.

Fanny looked at her friend as they ate in
silence.

93

— Know everything! There is naught in me I
do not wish you to know. But know it silent. She
would have been happy to be of help to Clara.

Summer was a full time in the Sales Office of
Delight Drinks Inc. Even so there came pause.
Slack hours lounged in the hot rooms. Booms,
writhed in the dry green blare of the electric
lights, burning like sores against the summer's
sultry and drab dampness, came to a halt, jolted
against their usual flow, stood glazed and omi-
nous upon the dark grain of Time.

As in a crowded car suddenly broken from its
speed the passengers congest, fall huddled upon
each other, so Fanny's girls piled heavy moist
against the soul of Fanny. She sat at her desk
with her hands laid before her. The girls at long
tables opened the envelopes of orders, marked
blanks and sheets, sorted by geographical loca-
tion, placed in trays. The girls yawned together
. . . sudden the girls were One, with moist
throat running down in dusty waist, with bare
arm brushing sweat from brow, with body
crowded lush in a narrow skirt, under narrow
table, into narrow shoes. They were a body
breathing and sweating in a smoulder of will to
lie out naked near a lapping sea under cool winds
. . cool lips. She loved the girls.

— 0 if I eould show you how I understand !

— Why do I understand?

Here with these girls, her life could come and
she face it. Question no longer. Her life was a
way, here, tender and passionate and simple,
leading into the hearts of a dozen girls.

94

— I am all open. You do not come in.
I am all open. I come into you.

"It's a hot afternoon, girls. "

"Gee . . yes!"

"What do you say to a round of lemonade?"

Surface of scared wills against a whirling
world. But here all was quiet and sweet, and all
was in herself. She could look at each girl, see a
face already bitten and shrunk by the acids of
life. But she looked in herself, and each hurt,
each struggle was a throb within her . . they were
healed.

"Good! You, Daisie, you know that Italian's
on the corner? Let's collect five cents each — only
those who want it though ! You go out, dear, and
bring up a pitcher . . two pitchers." As Daisie
bustled by, she slipped a quarter holding the little
calloused hand just long enough to give two mes-
sages: "Buy some cookies or something with
that" and her heart's fullness.

— What do I understand? now she asked herself
as the room waited, spinning in expectancy, re-
leased in laughter and jest and stretching of arms
from Time.

-—There is something beautiful . . in the un-
derstanding? in what? 0 life how you hurt! 0
life, how when one holds you warm and athrob
in one's heart, you are good, hurting!

The lemonade came : giggles and smacking lips
softened the blare of the lights. "One can live,"
Fanny murmured sipping her sweet drink, . .
"without questions." The room went its way up
Time's black tunnel. The girls' congestion broke.

95

They were one and one and one. They were many
girls, now, some sweet, some bitter, some bright,
some dull, some brave, some ugly and broken.
They were many girls at work : they opened en-
velopes, marked blanks and sheets, sorted and
marked . . they droned in many minds about lit-
tle shut circles of thought, each shut from the
other circles : circles spun about their many heads,
colliding, rebounding, spinning away alone. . .

— One can live without asking questions. Not
you. One can live spinning and droning. Not
you. One can weave a steel sheet between one's
heart and one's mind. Not you. Lord, I shall
think. I promise, Lord. . . I shall remember
that I have suffered and died, that I am here, to
think. . . Lord, just a little longer.

Fanny walked home alone, avoiding Clara. In
the dim afternoon the City was solid. Houses
were made of stone and brick and were held up in
their vast weights by pavements.

Pavements solid strong, hold me up also.
You hold these crowds, you hold these walls.
Solid City, do not let me fall.
Fanny walked tense through the slack after-
noon, helping to hold herself. Her trip from the
South was there. She runs swift, relaxed, through
the world. She falls through the world in a train,
falls upward. She falls upward upon God. Hold
me, City.
In her room, the Church. Her fists 'clenched.

96

"I am going to move," she muttered, her breath
was angry. She hated . . she hated. "Damn
that Church! it blots out most of the sun."

Down she went, deliberate, to the kitchen. Old
Mrs. Deemis bent rhythmically over a padded
board ironing towels.

"Hot, eh? Mrs. Luve."

"Yes."

"Anything I kin do for you, dearie!" the
woman filled the pause. Her gray hair fell in wet
patches over her wide bland forehead. "Never
you hesitate if there's anything I kin do for ye,
now."

Fanny, quailing before her sudden resolve to
give notice, sat in a chair.

"You couldn't remove that Church for me, could
you, Mrs. Deemis?"

Mrs. Deeinis stamped the steaming iron with
elbows right-angled to the board.

' ' Now, will you believes me, Mrs. Luve, I wisht
I could!"

Fanny tried to laugh. — Haven't I been joking!

"You mean Saint — acrost the way there, don't
you? They own this house, and they're the mean-
est landlords . . the downright stingiest, mean-
est landlords, now, you ever seen. I been here
twenty years. On the first of the month, it's the
rent quick, you bet. But if it's the roof that leaks,
or the plumbin' that stinks — 0 any year '11 do for
fixin' that."

"This is Church property," murmured Fanny.

"Yes . . this . . " Mrs. Deemis flourished
the dismal kitchen with its seeping walls, its

97

crumbling plaster ceiling, its ooze rotted ijoor, into
the eyes of Fanny.

"How can I live on Church property," Fanny
thought aloud.

"Why! . . Mrs. Luve!" Mrs. Deemis doubted
her ears. "What'd ye say? Beg pardon! "

"They're rotten landlords?"

"Well now . . of course. . . I dont say
they're no worse. . . "

"The Church takes the sun from my window,
Mrs. Deemis. I love the sun."

"Why you aint never there? You work. What
do ye need the sun for? . . Dont blame the
Church for that, my dear. You must be fair. If
'twasnt the Church wouldn't it be one of these
here . . now . . factories or office-buildings ? ' '

" taking the sun," murmured Fanny and

saw the once more ploughing arms of the old lady.

"You aint thinkin' of leaving, Mrs. Luve?
Cause . . that's a fine room . . kin rent "

< < Why no. ' ' Fanny got up. ' ' No, I shant move.
I love my room. But if you could be so obliging
as to remove that Church . . " She laughed with
her eyes gleaming differently from laughter.

Upstairs she lowered the shades. She un-
dressed. Naked, she saw in the glass that she still
wore her hat. Her brow ached. She let fall her
hair, letting her cold hands run through its electric
dusk. Ungowned in her sheet she lay through
the thick night with hands clasping her arms be-
neath her breasts. She lay dreamless, moving
very fast. When she awoke it was late and- she

98

knew she had gone far. There were red furrows
deep in the flesh of her arms.

The night following . . sudden she emerged
from the hot fog that held her. She is in the
Church. Naked she stands before a stately mirror
whose gold-tooled pediment crowned the blaze of
her black hair and eyes. She struck her breasts
with a firm fist. "You are cast out, you are vom-
ited by Love." She stands there burning in cold
shame. Her mouth is open, and from it, like
a white water, runs a moan. "What does it mean?
Christ, what does it mean? Why was I hurt so?
Why was I so given a high thought, high dream?
I have been hurt. 0 Christ how it hurts so to be
hurt without a meaning. Why?"

— This is a Church! She knew that Christ was
coming. He was a man whom she knew. She
could not see him, standing there beyond her : but
each nerve of her lay in the impact of his presence.
— He sees me! It was right that he should look
upon her naked and shamed. — It is good, it is
good. He looks on me and that is good. He looks
on me because my hurt is an unmeaning hurt. . .

Her half-opened eyes, her half-shut hands, her
outstretched knees and her thighs touched the
warm smoothness of her bedclothes. —I am so
tired ! It was good in bed. She slept.

She walked downtown in the young summer
morning. The air had a coolness like lilacs after
rain. A man passed. Coming closer, sheer, the
sight of the man tugged on the cheek and on the
neck of Fanny. A man old and bent. Grey beard
tangled from a face long furrowed : the eyes were

99

blue and gentle and the brow was untouched. . .
His beard was a grey prayer. His face was his
life. Above his life was his brow like a dawn
above storm. "He was a Jew," she whispered to
herself. Then she remembered her dreaming and
her moan.

. . Something within her said: "There is no
hurry. " Much within her said: "You have no life,
you are broken. "Why alive ? You are broken and
flayed by life. Life without what you have lost is
a mere agony dying down, a slow starving, a slow
suffocation." But something within her said:
"There is no hurry."

Something within her stirred to say: "Even
your hurt has a soul. Even the insult lying in your
heart has a soul. " Then her hands worked faster.
She had eyes then for her girls toiling in their
mute slavery, that brought out love, like a cool
mist rising from a morning sun, into the dismal
workroom.

At times, eating her meat and enjoying it,
laughing alone at a show, she found in herself
assurance . . mad and blind howsoever . . like
a babe 's lying within a womb.

She asked herself doubtingly : "You have been
unhappier having, than now when you are empty.
Perhaps I am dead!"

Each thought and pain, pushing forth from her,
could not leave the mist of her strange slumber.
So that she could not be unhappy. For unhappi-

100

ness is the departure of ourselves from ourselves,
the adventure beyond us of our hearts and eyes.
Fanny was caught in her pregnant slumber. Her
consciousness was like a maze of creatures crawl-
ing about a Sphere who cannot leave its surface :
who cannot conceive of aught within or without
its surface : creatures of two dimensions spanning
a Globe about and about . . and yet unable to
know it.

It had been hot, this day : now late, sultry clouds
pressed like steel on the pulsant City. Dust rose
in a great wind. The Office seemed to plunge
through a sea of dust and steel cloud.

The others were gone: in the suddenly dark
room, Fanny worked alone with Mr. Johns. He
examined her books, leaning over her, just above
her shoulder, breathing palpably there in the dark
room.

A gust of wind from the gray window scattered
a pile of papers, Johns' hand came flat on the
table.

"It's going to rain," he said.

"Yes."

He strode to the window and shut it.

"That wont be too hot? All these papers will
blow, I'm afraid."

"It's cooler, already."

It was not cooler. The shut window made the
dark room plunge and stifle. Fanny felt ill. Her
hands ran over the sharp cool sheets of paper,

101

The nerves of the palms of her hands were shrill.

"Is that all, Mr. Johns?"

' i There 's the whole South yet ! We 'd better see
how they're drinking down in the South."

"Oyes . ."

"You wouldn't forget the South?"

A picture bright like a knife . . this her house,
the garden, Edith in her blue bassinette . . cut
her and filled the room.

— Get away! get away!

' ' Now — first, Virginia — ' 9

" Yes. " —Get away ! 0 my baby ! 0 Harry ! How
could you? Couldn't you understand? Yet? Where
are you Edith? . . "This was at Flora's table."
— Get away !

She talked. Her words were dim, she could not
see her words. She went on talking . . . strong
hands gripped her arms near her shoulders,
turned her. A long heavy face — red and kind —
thrust bewilderment upon her eyes that could not
see her words.

"Mrs. Luve!"

— Your face is different: heavier, solider . .
could it hurt so?

"Mrs. Luve! "

— Your hair is not silky. Silk cuts. Silk cuts.

"Mrs. Luve ! what is the matter?"

He placed her in a chair. The window flew open.
Steel cool night flooded in. The room righted.

"Excuse me, Mr. Johns . . I — I reckon I — I
was faint a bit. . Let's go on."

"There's no hurry."

—He's looking at me. And I can't see my

102

words. I am talking. I must talk. Do my words
stand between me and him ? 0 they must . . Silk
only cuts . . She stopped.

Her heart was weary. — If you must see, you
big good man, then see. I can fend no more. I
let go. She covered her face one moment with her
hands. No tears. Her head lifted, eyes blazing.

"Well," she said, "have you seen enough?
Have you had enough ! Coward ! ' '

A heavy hand lay gently upon hers. Gentle
hand outstretched from a long arm . . O how
long ! and there, vastly beyond as in a dream, this
man: solid red good.

"Quiet," his hand spoke to her. The other
hand. "Quiet." Fanny jumped up.

She saw him there, and that he was frightened.

— He is frightened by me, he is frightened about
me ! He cares because he sees me in pain. He is
worried about me. Impossible, impossible. Bight
this!

Fanny's scream knifed through the grayness.
Then she was clear. She stood there, seeing him
in the dark room, clear.

He saw her clarity : his brow clouded.

' ' I don 't understand, ' ' he said. ' ' I thought you
were sick: you seemed hysterical, Mrs. Luve. I
meant only to quiet you."

"Your hand you mean? It was good. Thank
you for your hand, sir. It took one scream from
me. Thank you."

She breathed very fast. She was headclear
now, as if in a storm which had passed all fibre,

103

all flesh had been stripped from her taut nerves.
She was a framework of nerves.

"Thank you," she said again. "One less
scream. Do you know what that means? One
less scream!"

He came to her and clasped her arm.

"Scream again."

She looked at him full. "Wait," she panted.
He held her. She leaned back feeling his hands
strained by her weight to eat into her arms.

"Wait!" There was a liquid fullness in her
voice. "Perhaps I can laugh instead. Laugh — "

"No. Don't laugh, I tell you. Don't lie, for
God's sake. Scream."

There was a silence. The silence was all fresh
and new like a dawn.

Gently she pressed from him. She sat by the
table at the room's far side. She buried her face
in her hands on the cluttered table. She wept. . . .

She wept long. She stayed still motionless
there, with her face buried among papers after she
had wept. The world came back : — The dusk of
the spent day. The long cool wake of the spent
heat-storm. The little office, pitching no longer
. . spent . . atop the cluttered City. And this
man, stranger she had worked for now many
months, who was solid and could help . . this man
so good that he had made her scream.

With a felt slowness she lifted her head, turned
her face.

— He is there ! He has not moved. He stands
there silent, held by the sight of me . . . while I
wept.

104

She smiled at him.

"Do you feel better now?

She nodded.

She nodded. He brought her coat and hat. An
orange feather tufted from the straw. His long
vein-straggled hand ran over the feather. She
looked at it. The feather was not ruffled.

"Thank you," she said very soft.

His face was rounder with a smile. She saw
his jagged teeth and his soft twining lips. She
saw the dimple in his chin and his long neck.
— Ostrich! She was alert, serious as he helped
her. She felt him . . good . . with her back . .
all about her . . as he helped her.

—He is sure ! While I wept, he was there, not
moving !

The hand she held out to his seemed small to
her, pretty. . . .

There was a knock on Fanny's door.

"It's me, Mrs. Luve."

"0 Mrs. Deemis. Come in. ."

She was almost dressed. The old lady gave a
glance that was like a draught of drink at the
whole room . . her room, changed so often into
new mystery of him or her who hired it. She
lived familiarly in mystery. It warmed her. She
had no man, her children were gone: she had a
family of mystery. She did not know but on these
she subsisted,

105

f There was a phone call for you . . early . .
your office. A Mr. Johns — he didn't give no other
name — he said as how if you wasn't feeling well
this morning you should knock off. It'd be alright.
Are you sick, dearie ?"

"No." Restless before her mirror. — What
should I do here, workless? "Yesterday after-
noon a little . . The New York heat, I reckon."

"I guess so. Well," the old lady opened the
door, "Take the chancet when it's offered. Eh?"
She was a silent woman for she was full of her
mysteries. She left. Fanny went on dressing.

But there came a morning in the clear coolness
of autumn. Fanny's eyes opened from sleep. Her
body stretched on its back . . the warm thin bed
. . her body less plump already measuring the
bed . . the bed measuring the wall, soft cream . .
the room . . windows behind their white mesh
curtains thresholding, flaring, shouting out into
the world, all new and terrible again in its old Pain
. . came to her. Different! She lay. She could
lie, eyes open, and the windows flared and led out,
and there was the Pain of the congested world:
yet she lay warm, stretched in her bed, and could
bear it.

— It 's Sunday. 0 how good ! It was long, back
in the age that was separate by the Abyss, since
she had lain awake in a sweet bed. — Why?

— There's been a hairy monster sitting on my
face!

106

The hair in my eyes, the fat and the stink and

the bag
Glued on my mouth ! . .

Here was a clear gold morning, full of sun . .
a morning mad to drink . . —He squats there yet!
Gold mornings made to drink, clear cool drinkable
days. I'll drink you yet, I'll drink you yet. Sun-
veined air, wine of the sun, I'll have you!
— Find out the monster's name : pull him, tweak

him.
Find out his name and he'll squeal away like

a pig.
— 0 he is there. But I have sipped a morning.

She got out of bed . . dimness before her eyes
and brow like a curtain before fire. The curtain
became mist. She knew so yet it must be . . the
mist quenched and quenched. Not all the fire!
Never all the fire! In this way she got out of bed.

In her nightgown she stood by the open win-
dow, letting the cold air race through her. She
looked at the Church, she did not feel the cold
air save that there was sun in it. The Church
did not race. It stayed there immovable. It was
fixed somewhere under the spinning of her world
. . where the Pain was also. Half naked by the
open window and the Church, she took her Bible
and opened it. She felt the Church a dull base
on which the Bible was written: from which it
leaped, it leaped in syllables of sun.

107

"When the morning stars sang together, and

all the sons of God
Shouted for joy . . "

She turned the pages. She saw:

"For I say unto you,

Whosoever shall put away his wife saving for

the cause

Of fornication causeth her
To commit adultery."

She shut the book. She looked at the Church.
She looked at the Church, the morning stars sang
through her flimsy nightgown. But she was not
cold. She wondered.

She went back into bed, holding the Bible. Two
fingers marked the two places she had read. Her
eyes narrowed. — I am beginning to think! Once
more she jumped up. She turned the curtains
back so that the windows were bare. She went
again to her bed. She could see the Church now
from her pillow. She pressed the little black book
against her breasts. " Where, " she said aloud,
"in which of the two places does it touch me?"
She pressed the Bible against her left breast and
against her right breast. She liked the feel of the
hard book against her. . . . "What sucks me!"
she whispered. " . . that which has cast me out, or
the other that draws, that welcomes?" She lifted
her two hands high above her face. "Yes" she
cried, ' ' the other that calls me good ! ' ' Her hands
fell in her bosom. — / am beginning to think. Do

108

words in sunlight leap from a page and leave it?
She turned her head, gazed at the wall of the
Church so heavy and fixed against the sun-dazzled
window. The organ rose. A hymn, many- voiced,
twined with the organ, pealed slanting upwards
toward her through the window. — It leaves the
Church. Comes to me. I hear it as no one . .
don't I know? . . as none of them sticking in
their varnished pews. / hear alone. Out of a
Church. She took the Bible again and read the
words of Jesus.

She read them calmly. She looked away seeing
the terrible words. Pain, agony of shame and of
deprival, rending of doubt parted once more the
golden haze she had lived in for a moment. — I
am sinking back! She was afraid. — I am sink-
ing. There it was all . . Harry, her search to
hold, to find him: the lancing anguish of her
revelation: Leon, Edith, the ecstacy of Good . .
and the cool-lipped stranger so close pointing a
finger, thrusting her out with a finger.

Fanny rocked in her bed, rocked motionless,
dizzy with rocking thoughts. — Go away, go away,
she moaned. — Why, why must I ask Why! I
cannot bear it.

There was a knock on her door. She was very
still. Knock, knock.

"What is itt"

"May I come in? . .It's Clara Lonergan . . "

"0 you . . . Yes. Come in."

The girl smiled: "It's such a bully morning."

"I am glad you came."

109

"I had no idea you'd be so lazy. I thought you
might come for a walk."

6 * The day came into the room. I have both day
and bed."

Clara brought a chair to the bed and sat down.
She saw the Bible.

"And Church too, I see." Her lips curled but
her eyes were really smiling.

"Don't you approve of Church?"

"No," said Clara, "I hate it. Hy Church at
any rate. Pa said it was the Priests that made
Mother willing to die."

"Well . . what have Church and Bible to do
with each other?"

Clara laughed. "0 come on! Let's walk. It's
cold in here." She drew her boa across her
throat. ' i Shall I close the window ? ' '

"Don't you dare!" cried Fanny. She jumped
out of bed. She was exhilerated. Her nightgown
fell to the floor.

Clara was up. "You'll catch your death of
cold ..."

"No, no," said Fanny. She stood there naked.
Her arms were lifted above her. "I'm not cold.
There are stars and sun in this room . . they are
racing through me."

"You're mad, dear," said Clara. She was
close. She placed her hands on the naked wom-
an's shoulders. Their eyes met. Clara's eyes and
face went down. Very lightly she touched her
lips upon the throat of Fanny.

"Dfess . . Hurry." Clara went back to her
chair; half-turne'd away she fingered the fallen

110

Bible. There was a new warm glow between them
in the room.

Fanny dressed silent, fast.

" Why do you want to move about I" She seated
herself in her wrapper before Clara on the bed.
"I don't feel like walking. I'll close the win-
dows. I'll make the bed in a jiffy. You stay."

"Go and make yourself some coffee. I'll fix
the couch."

"I'll make coffee for two."

"Alright."

They sat at last, quiet in the clear sunlit room,
and smiled at each other. Sleep and the night
were gone, with the bed. turned couch.

"Now it's my sitting room," laughed Fanny.

"You've been used to more than that."

"Please don't!" Then Fanny was sorry. "No
I don't mean that. I don't mean to hide myself
from you, Clara. Only, it hurts."

"You don't have to talk . . with mo. I'm not
that sort. I'm not the sort of girl who measures
a friendship by the number of secrets chattered
about."

"I know."

"I feel we're friends, yon and I. That's
enough."

"That's enough. But 0, Clara, if I knew a
single thing in all the world, I'd tell you. I
don't know anything. Perhaps you know more
than I"

"I know some things," said Clara.

"I feel you know some things," Fanny looked
at her friend's long taut hands. They reached

111

for her bag, opened it, took out a box of cigarettes.
She offered it, open, to Fanny. "Go ahead. "
They both smoked.

"I know that a smoke tastes good," said Clara.
"I know that in the mornings a cup of coffee
tastes good. I know I'm young and that the world
won't give me a thing . . not a thing! . . unless I
fight, unless I cheat."

"What has it to give?"

"Just things that taste good . . . "

"Then . .f"

"Then let's die."

"Why do you say Cheat, Clara? Why don't
you say Pay?"

"To pay comes high."

"To cheat comes low." She looked at Clara
long. "I don't believe you, Clara. There's no
cheat in you."

"Then you don't know me."

"You said that we knew each other."

' ' Well, look at me ! " She stood. " I am lovely.
Look." Her hands caressingly followed her words.
"My hair is black and soft. My mouth is warm.
This is a good white throat, I know . . And my
body is good — 0 so good and clean, and so swell-
ing-slender like a lily. My body deserves some-
thing, that is sure." She sat down. She blushed.
"So does yours," she went on. "I've seen you.
So does yours."

Fanny's hands clasped swaying. "If you
could see, O girl, if you could see what has been
done upon my body!"

She looked away with her hands still swaying

112

. . The Church! She did not know where to
look. She hid her eyes in her hands.

Clara got up. She lifted the face of her friend
and held it between her palms.

"I can see much, Fanny. Don't say a word. I
can see much."

Her hands slipped down. They were fists. Slow,
the cigarette smoke, closed them, sat down.

Soon she left. ,

Fanny Dirk opened the windows wide, let out
the cigarette smoke, closed them sat down.

— Who is right,

Jesus or God?

— What do I know of Jesus, what does
Harry know? There is a meaning that is God's
in the words of Christ, and I can't find it out.
Who knows it? Leon? It seemed to her that
Leon knew. A Jew. He uses neither Love nor
Christ. . . the unlovely and unChristian Jews.
We did not meet in Washington. Yet we had a
talk. It seems to me I know what Leon said to
me in Washington. What Harry said at home?
That is real — yet it seems more like a shadow.
Harry? You must not hate Harry. Hard. You
dare not. What is there terrible in hate? Others
hate . . good healthy people hate. Why can't
you? Why, when hate comes for Harry, do you
sicken . . something in you rips, fades, bleeds
away? I am pulled out from my*self as if my
heart from my body. It is easier to hate than to

113

Page 113,t eighth line from top, reading

the cigarette smoke, closed them
sat down," should be eliminated
entirely, and the line shoiJd read
deliberate they beat against her

love. You cannot. One hate? 0 I love this
world of little people dragging through pain,
mired in it, sinking in pain. O I love you ! We are
close. Let me hate Harry ! You dare not. What
has he done? He turned good. He quoted Scrip-
ture . . here am I. Edith, Edith— your father
killed me quoting the words of Christ. 0 this is
not it. There is something beyond. I am exiled.
Did God give me exile? I could have stayed and
fought. . . Not Harry, God gave me exile. Will
you hate God? If Harry because you thought he
gave you exile, why not hate God? Why not?
Why cannot I hate God? He made the Morass
of pain in which the world so pitifully struggles,
so pitifully dies ! Hate God ! Not Harry. You
too . . who knows what agony you have lived,
what sickly visions you have had, lifting you up.
Poor Harry . . if one understands you, Boy . .
I understand you, miserable Boy . . Fool ! I can't
hate you. God? Hate God? . . not if you under-
stand him also.

— There was a tree, I see a tree standing upon
a mountain side above a quiet lake. And the tree's
roots break out. The tree falls into the water.
Downward it groans, crashing and crushing. But
in the water does it not lie still? No, it rots.
Why does it fall, why does it rot so still when it
has fallen? Why does the Hand of God draw it
down . . God who has made it grow . . down
against its growing, down against a thousand
sprouts and seedlings?

— I am falling, Fanny. Are you rotten also?
Where are you going? 0 if you pull me down,

114

Lord, I must go. You do not think that I am bad.
You know. God, you know everything, you must
see my girlhood . . how I pushed up, eager,
straight, sunward. You must see my wifehood.
You must see my motherhood. I fall. But I have
not lost you, God. 0 it hurts! . . Fall, fall . .
Why are you nearer, Father, when I fall?

She pressed her fingers hard against her brow.
— Little brain, is God in there? Her eyes with a
new salience touched the objects in her room . . .
the blue burlap on her couch, the chair, the Bible,
the wall of the still Church, the swift sun vaulting
away above the vaulting roofs. She bound her
fingers hard about her brow: — All of you . . all
. . I hold you. . . There is no air . . there are
no spaces. I touch everything that my eyes see,
everything that my mind holds . . . God?

Fanny sank to her knees on the floor. She felt
her face free and bright above her body. Her face
prayed, and her body:

"God . . go ahead. If I can stand it, Go ahead.
There you are down below. I see you. You draw
me like a tree, crashing down, crashing down."
She held her Bible high, let it go, it fell. "God . .
go ahead. "

She got up, seated herself once more : and began
to darn some stockings.

She worked long. At times: — I am hungry.
Better go out and eat, came to her faintly dizzy
head. She <?ould not. The room was ripe and
round, holding her firm.

A knock.

"Come in."

115

— Why am I not surprised? Christopher Johns
stepped into the room, shut the door.

She gazed at him silent.

"You don't mind?" he asked. "I was in the
neighborhood. Thought I'd look in. The lady
downstairs . . what a dear old lady ! . . said you
were out: I could knock if I wanted to be sure."

"Sit down."

He took off his coat and laid it on the couch. It
crowded nearly the whole couch. He sat down.

" I 'm glad I found you in. This is a nice room, ' '
he said. "Do they give you enough heat now
winter's coming?"

She went on darning.

"More heat than I'm used to at home."

"Where is your home?"

"I have no home."

"You look so home-like there," after a pause
he went on,, laborious^ determined. "Darning
your stockings . . in your dark-blue wrapper."

"All sorts of women darn stockings . . and
wear wrappers." She did not look at him. She
was framed in the knowledge that he looked at
her.

She saw his hand go through his thick brown
hair. She felt it.

"I've been married fifteen years," he said. "I
know what I feel in you."

She bit her lips. —Tell me. Tell me !

"For fifteen years I've been married to two
women."

She looked up.

"Only one of them legal, of course. But mar-

116

ried to both of them just the same. I have had
scores of girls during that time under my care.
I know something of woman. ' '

— About me? about me, kind man, what do you
know?

He answered her silence. "You I do not know.
You are a mystery to me, Fanny. But you're true
and whole . . . that I know . . like the whole
earth. "

He had called her Fanny !

"My wife's name is Sylvia. She's pretty and
prim and worships her figure. You can imagine
what she thinks of mine! She's always been
afraid because of her waistline to have a baby.
But before Sylvia came along, there was Sadie.
The first love of my youth. She was thirty then.
Now she's fifty. Fat and sentimental, good old
maternal Sadie. She 'd love to have children. But
how can she I She's so respectable . . she's so
ill-placed in a hard world. She 's been true to me,
has Sadie. Sadie envies Sylvia her marriage li-
cense . . the chance she has to have a brood of
kiddies. Sylvia despises Sadie, is above jealousy
(Sadie's a part of the landscape) and tells her-
self in her heart what a far better kept-lady she'd
have made, what better times she'd have had . .
she'd not have been true to me! . . if only she
were free and immoral like that fat old foolish
thing."

"Why do you tell me all this terrible farce?"

"I want you to know that I know women."

"How should I know it from that?"

117

" These misplaced women love me . . they're
my fate."

"All of your fate?"

"Not all."

"I don't know, Mr. Johns, why you should as-
sume my interest in all this . . "

He got up. "Fanny, there's more between us
than that."

"What do you want?" She was frightened.

"I want you to see me, as I see you. Not under-
stand me. Understanding's rot. I don't under-
stand you. What in hell do we understand? What
counts is seeing. Touching. What we see and
touch is part of us." She stirred. — My words!
"You're part of me . . you . . because I see you
there, attached to me like a hand. That's what
I want."

"You're a fool. You had better try to under-
stand a little. You don't know a thing about me» ' '

"I don't want to, then. It's good you called me
a fool. That's the beginning of warmth, and
warmth is the beginning of wisdom. Pretty soon
you'll have to blind yourself in order not to see
me. You'll see me, alright. You don't want to
blind yourself?" He went on: "Never another
word shall I say about my two appendages . .
my simpering Sylvia and my grandiose Sadie. But
you'll touch it all. You'll see what that life is . .
you'll look at me: you'll see what a lot's left
over. . ."

Fanny got up from her chair. She stood blaz-
ing. Sudden she laughed and sat down. He came
to her and lifted her in his arms. His big body

118

covered her. He kissed her eyes and her brow,
her ears and her hair.

"Aren't you ashamed," she murmured.
"Aren't you ashamed!"

He placed her back in her chair. They breathed
hard. Silence.

She looked at this looming man. He was brutal,
she felt him gentle. He was abrupt, she felt him
slow like a child. He was big, she felt he needed
arms to cradle.

"Leave me alone!" sudden she cried. "I am a
lost creature. Don't pick me up. Leave me."

He knelt by her chair.

"I have a husband who has kicked me out. I
have a child I'm not good enough to touch."

His hands curled. "Fanny, you lie."

"I had a love affair. Do you hear me! I
committed adultery. Get out! Even Christ don't
forgive that. Do you see that Church over
there?" She jumped away from him and went
to the window. "My husband's a good man. If
he came to New York, that's likely where he'd
stop ... in that Parish house. If he passed me
in the street, he'd turn his face."

The room was between them. They, facing each
other, held. Fanny's voice changed. It had been
harsh and high. It was low.

"What do you want? Can't you see that I'm
dead? What do you want? Aren't there plenty
of women for the rest of your life? Why me?
Let me die."

He stood still.

"What can I give you ? Haven't I tried to give

119

to my husband . . to Edith? They've taken all.
I've failed. There's something the matter with
me."

He stood. They were silent.

Her voice was quiet. "I don't resist yon. Bo
you hear? I don't deserve to. I am dead. I am
nothing. You don't want that. I don't resist
you. You'll take your hat and you'll go. . ."

He held his silence, and she prayed in it. She
saw the world all One : and of it, like a throbhing
heart, like a high radiant head, she saw that there
was God. But she said again:

"There's something the matter with me."

Johns came to her : he stood above her, holding
her two hands.

"Come beside me, Fanny."

The tears ran silent down her cheeks. — What
does it mean?

"Come beside me. 0 close. Lie close with me,
Fanny."

She felt his arms lifting her like a leaf in a
warm wind . . laying her down. She felt his
hands and his mouth that fell like a warm rain on
her parching flesh. She shut her eyes.

... So that day they had walked with Autumn
burning all about them. Silently. She, walking
through the years with feet at last aware: he,
mute unconscious, reckless of pasts, praying that
as she walked beside him . . this strange deep
lovely creature who had become his life . . she
should not walk away.

120

The day was done. They sat in their room at
the Inn, with Night.

They felt the Night. It was clear and brittle
like a violin : it gave forth notes, sharp, penetra-
ble, woody: it wove its voices into silken strands.
It was a dark and glowing violin. The room in
which they sat was still of the past of the Inn
which had been a Mansion. The ceiling came low :
the beds were canopied:' chairs, lowboy, brass
hearthpieces, rag rug over the black softwood
floor, drew into a tight repressed luxuriance, into
a single mood, strong, curbed, sufficient, that was
New England : ancient New England pregnant of
bursting strengths.

Here they sat, thrust close upon each other by
the Night and by the moodpent room.

He wanted to take her hand, he did not dare.
His eyes searched her retiscence.

"It was a great day, Fanny. We must have
walked twenty miles."

She saw the miles . . miles of trees flaring
against their false defeat. — 'We move skyward I
Come, Winter, strip us . . still do we move sky-
ward 1 ' She saw the miles : hours of her small feet
beating immortal earth.

"Jonathan," she spoke at last, "I am going to
leave you."

He hid his face in his hands.

h "I have been drugged into peace. Now you
want to drug me into happiness."

"Put it that way if you will."

"It cannot be."

What could he say?

121

"I do not know," she whispered, "why it is.
It must be, Dear. Let us not argue. Let us not
rend the beauty of our parting with inquisitive
words — words that can only claw a truth. Let us
be peaceful here for the days that remain. Let us
accept what neither of us knows . . like our births,
Dear, like our deaths: just so deep. It must be."

He took away his hands from his face.

"I shant argue, Fanny. "When I first saw you
and loved you, I said: 'She may come: that is
possible. She will go: that is sure.' I knew.
What right have I to argue? You have blessed
me with life. If now I must pay, so be it. "Which
part is the blessing — I don't know Fanny: my
having you, or the long years I shall walk alone if
you leave me, and fill with my word: 'I have had
her.'"

"You have given me Peace. You have given
me what I must give up."

"I will not argue. I cannot give up hope. Wont
you speak to me, Fanny?"

"What can I say?"

"What are you?"

She was still.

. . "Why did you come to me? Why did yott let
me love you? Why did you not resist? Where
do you come from, Fanny? where are you going?"

Her eyes came very slowly from within her
world, came to this gentle clumsy lover of hers,
rested upon him. He was there, broken into deep
shadow, sudden light by the sharp flicker of the
open fire.

122

"None of us could answer any of your ques-
tions. Why should I be able to?"

"You more than most of us."

"When I came to New York, my coming meant
one thing. Without that meaning my coming to
New York, my leaving my home and my child were
simple horror. All my life was a hideous jest
unless my coming to New York meant one mean-
ing."

"What was that meaning?"

"When I know, I won't be any longer where
you are."

He bowed his head: a jet of flame touched his
brow livid like a gash above his grey-shadowed
face.

"When I came to New York I fought against
that meaning. For all that I had given up, for all
the saying to myself You are dead, You are a
sacrifice and knowing it, there was in me a self
that wanted to live, wanted the good things I had
given up. That is why you found me as you did.
Resist you? I hungered for you, Dear. You
meant, for a while, a Home, Love, a child, — you
are such a child, such a dear good child — you
meant all I had lost. You took from my coming to
New York its meaning. You were a substitute,
see? for what I had lost. And that makes it all a
hideous jest, all my life. I did not come to seek
an exchange, to build on the same charred ground
where my life was burned away. That I know.
But 0 I could not resist you. You forgive me,
Jonathan? I was so sick, so weak. My arms
needed so to hold my child, they were so empty.

123

You were a lie, but 0 you were good. Forgive
me, Jonathan. I knew all along. I needed to drug
myself to be peaceful in my peace with you. The
City . . work . . our flat . . they drugged me.
Stealing some of your linen to mend it, nursing
your cold just for a couple of days, taking the
problem of your life and suffering by it, trying to
help solve it . . 0 it was drunkenness, it was
ecstacy, Dear, it was wrong. I couldn't stay
drugged. So it was wrong for you. Unfair, per-
haps. Have I hurt you? Have I . . 0 God . .
have I returned evil for evil after all? I have
been hurt. And in the anger and the pain, I
have understood why the world injures the world.
I have understood how from evil received, from
injury done, .comes the irresistible impulse to
return evil, to injure. I did not want that. I
have done it ! Yes. I have hurt you. Good tender
man . . victim already of two selfish women. I
have come with the poison of my wounds, and
poisoned you."

He shook his head. "No, Fanny. You have
healed me."

"If you knew how you said that . . how weak
your voice was. You were strong, bursting, bub-
bling."

"Whatever happens . . I am free of those
two. . ."

"But now you are so still. Almost, you are thin
. . Yes, I have done this. I have done this. I will
continue to do this, poison others with the poison
of my wound, so long as I seek to be healed. Do

124

you see? That is what makes the world endlessly
hurt the world. It seeks to be healed. Do you
see? Each human soul, wounded by another soul,
seeks a soul to be healed. And the wound is
passed along, endlessly, endlessly. 0 the vicious
circle. And I am in it. God thrust me from home,
God drew me as a stone is drawn to the earth . .
away and out of the Circle. And I came back and
entered it again. 0 I will try again : I was weak.
I was not aware. I will know better. I must not
seek to be healed. That is what I have learned.
Can you see that, Dear? That is the deadly poison,
that is the curse of passing on the poison . . that
is the endless circle of a poisoned world. We seek
to be well. We crave peace. We crave love. Even
I. I came to you with my bloody soul. ' Heal me ! '
I said. And now you are bloody, too And I no
less bleeding. Do you understand just a little,
Jonathan? why the peace you gave me, the care
and the tenderness you placed into my empty
arms . . why all that has been wrong? The hide-
ous joke, this happiness you offered: the cruel
wrong, this happiness I seek?

". . Yes . . my arms are still empty." She
held them forth as she spoke . . toward him.
"They still hunger. 0 will they never stop ach-
ing to hold? aching to be full? My breast is still
a woman's. . . But I shall try better now. Do
you hear me, God, wherever you are ? I was tired.
I was broken beyond knowing. I slipped back
from falling. I couldn't go on falling upward
upon you. Not then. I shall try again. Another
chance, God, will you? . . Yes, you will. There

125

is no other way that you can do. . . Dear, do you
understand?"

His face was before her, crumpled, like a child's
. . lost in the Dark where she had left him, weep-
ing and yet afraid to cry. . .

126

Tj \ANNY walked up the street into the Winter
i-^ sun. It was morning. The sun stood low
JL in the street's square gap: its heatless
dazzle was in her eyes as she walked. She walked
with sight blurred by the sun among the men and
women walking like her to work. They were the
substance of their shadows, long and black upon
the sunglazed City. They swam! like wraiths,
remnants of warm houses, warm sleep, in the in-
human brilliance of the sun.

Fanny thought: "When I came, what was it
that led me to Christopher Johns?"

The comfort of that place, was it curse or splen-
dor lying in her mind? What had it been to
Clara? Is Clara there? She had learned quick
that there was no place like it. She was unskilled.
The one skill she had . . the human one of know-
ing girls, of managing them well, of a clear head
for practical affairs . . who again as she stepped
wearying into offices for work would read it in
her?

The crowds beat on: the day was going to dim.
As the sun went high, these atoms of shadow
hording against sun would win. For a day. Till
the next morning. Fanny felt that her feet were
dark and that they walked on brightness.

— Only my feet. Because they are so tired. I
am not black, I am white. In this surge of
shadow, Fanny felt wanly white. Her head was

127

dizzy, unpropped by the warm crowds hording
against cold sun.

—And yet I am so small. How changed and
grown from the white girl? . . The door to the
loft factory stood a steel barrier to the day.
Within: musty heat air full of the stale traceries
of wistful hands sewing at steel machines. She
went in.

Above the whirr of Fanny's work there was a
voice speaking. Under the blanket of Fanny's
sleep there was a voice speaking. Across her
words in meeting men and women, across the
words of men and women meeting her, there was
a voice speaking. It was one, and it was Fanny.

She knew at times. At times she did not hear
it. She would emerge from the thick inattention
. . sleep or fever or work or even fun . . and she
would know it had spoken. It ran through the
heavy years that were now hers like a thin Light
moving along the bottom of a Sea that had no
sun, moon, star. . . .

— Girl. Perfect girl ! I am not tall, but my body
is tight. And my mind is taller than all these
minds about me. It reaches higher than yours,
slow brother, yours, Annie, yours, Delia. It is
faster too. It moves very fast, it can skip ahead
of your thoughts, it can turn about and wait and
squat there grinning, till your thoughts catch up.
And it is white and clean. I am fearless. I think
that is purity . . don't you, Jesus up there? You
weren't afraid and that is why you were pure.

128

My mind is white and sound like my body leap-
ing, skipping where it wills, over low stones, over
low mud. What have I to fear ! I am I. ...

— I walk the street under magnolia blooms be-
tween the proud old houses. . . That's Fanny
Dirk: queer girl! I am simply myself. When
Annie begins to squint at me I know what she's
thinking about, I know what's troubled her last
night. I can feel sorry for you, Annie. My figure
is rather roundish, but the men are just where I
want them. I have eyes and lips and a mind to
spit them on. This mouse-blue frock is lovely
even so, as I walk dangling my parasol through
the sun-splotched magnolia way. This cream-dim
ruching at my neck shows the olive note of my
skin. And that means there is blood flowing very
close. . . . And the white stockings are sharp
between the bias skirt and the black slip-
pers . . I walk fearless. I'll do what I will. . .
1 am surrounded by children.

— This dingy stair . . the factory girls . . you
are a factory woman! . . 0 for them true: this
horror for them is true. For me? this horror is
a tale. It is the words of a song. There is a
music . . music. For you and for you and for
you, grey shadows dripping from the sun through
the encaverned stairs, it is true Horror. It
should not be: for it is. For me, it is well . .
Fanny Dirk with blue prim frock and the olive
throb of my throat . . for it is something else.

— My room, so small, is the casing of my body.
Shouldn't it fit? It must fit to keep me whole.
Those gloves that were so much too big, how I

129

froze in them last Winter: how the Winter came
in to my fingers as I walked, till I had money to
buy another pair. Bargain-counter gloves . . the
right size-mark . . that girl with eyes like pan-
thers who dared not take them back, that man
with eyes like dead fish, who would not! If my
room is too big the world will come in like Win-
ter to those gloves : and freeze me and burn me.
Dear bare tight room ! So much holier and tighter
than the one of the Church: that was so big
Jonathan could come in. Lies . . drugs . . came
in. Here no one. You are my skin. No one dare
touch my skin. . .

Her eyes went up and down about her room:
her eyes stood upon its cot, upon its whitewashed
walls, upon the paintless table, like the eyes of
Fanny Dirk standing within her mirror.

—I do look well in black. My face is white and
colors on me need just that touch of plumpness I
have lost. Black eats away the hollow of my
memory of plumpness. My breasts droop: the
curve of my thigh is not so lovely now. Black
covers me, I used to be gay almost like naked in
the blue and the rose. Black wears. My body
does not wear. I am wearing out. I don't know
what I'd do without you, mirror! Your bright-
ness is the only laughter in the room. Sometimes
your laugh is a mocking. Never mind. I find
when I look in your laughter, even if it is a mock-
ing, that I find myself. She laughed aloud. — See
what I do when I see myself? Well, friend . .
why such a crusty room to case the body of
Fanny? . . There were soft casings once: little

130

gabled house, garden so brave above the dull
black earth, Harry, Edith . . you were all soft.
Edith my child ! Soft hands upon my arms, soft
lips upon my mouth biting me with such savage
softness. Edith? 0 my soft love whom I held
all about me . . who held me all. You are gone.
This hard sharp room that holds me like an iron
glove — now I have you alone . . and the mirror
that is laughter.

— I shut my face in my hands and you are
about me, my Baby. Only you. Your hands and
your hair and your little mouth. Edith, Edith . .
what are you now? . . The room is truer. Naked,
harsh, cruel . . room of emptiness, crushing my
flesh . . you will make all of me hard, all of me
callous from being cased by a hard whitewashed
room : a room with an iron bed. You are truer !

— I shut my eyes in my hands and you are about
me, my Baby. I am a baby with you. Our flesh is
one : our hands are one like petals entwined in a
flower. We are a flower together. We spring
from the black earth. We have had our blooming.
The earth is there, we are gone. In the black
earth under the snows, there is a seed of us, my
darling. I am the seed of us, Edith ! . . of our soft-
ness, of the bright bloom of our twined petals the
hard seed. I am lain away in the earth. The
earth blooms only in us.

— Flint-hard room buried beneath the City,
You case me, I shall burst you yet !
Buried within you, tight sealed room,

131

Buried within me, within your bitter cold-
ness . .
The folded memory of a flower.

— Cracks in the leaping ramparts of New York.
And I look down in them. I am a girl with short
black hair and hands that are strong. I peer
down on my knees at the fissures of New York.
I kick my slippered feet behind me, peering down.
My legs are solid in their white silk stockings and
when I toss my slippers Jack and Harry see my
legs to the knees : good legs : their eyes are bright,
looking, they swallow thick . . I look down into
the heart-beat of the City.

—I am not hungry. Look at me, Pan, look at
me huddling to-night around an oil stove and a
lamp, both on the floor and myself on the floor.
Black dress, grey frayed coat . . my hair is down
to keep my throat warm. The wind is a solid wall
of ice against my window : a Devil sucks it back,
it plunges again . . solid steel wall . . and splin-
ters of it cut through the glass and the bricks, cut
to my shoulders huddled over the oil stove and
the lamp.

— They smell. Hot smell that gets cold beyond
my shoulders. There in the corner, where the bed
is, where the washstand, is the smell of the oil
stove and the lamp . but cold. Here it is hot. I
could singe my eyebrows . . It is the style to
singe one's eyebrows . . or cut them or some-
thing. How do they do it, those sharp pencil-

132

lines over eyes? The smell is cold by the mirror
. . I stay huddled. But do you think all the ladies
with red cheeks and penciled brows and eye fire-
dried .• . are they walking Broadway to-night ? . .
have got so by huddling like me too close over a
stove and a lamp ?

— In the rest of the house it is quiet and asleep.
The wall of ice plunges against my room. My
room alone. I am not hungry. To-morrow I have
a job so I cannot be hungry. Lamp and stove, tell
me, are you burning my cheeks red too? . . are
you going to singe my eyebrows? are you going
to sear my eyes?

— (New York! New York! why am I here,
frozen and empty in your leaping arms, peering
into your bowels? Women with burnt faces walk
your streets. Women wander like dreams denied
through your pent streets. There are in New
York men and women who worship God. Chris-
tians only, Jews only. Worshipers, only of God.
Are you New York, you worshipers of God? Have
you made this ? Has your God let you make this ?

( — I am at the threshold of long thoughts, like
caverns warmed with earth. I shall think now,
and be no longer cold nor hear the wind like a
steel sea on my shoulder.)

— On Broadway there are women with burnt
souls, and there are Jews. New York is
full of Jews. What does that mean? Spirit of
a Jew quenched the white-stockinged girl: bore
her to womanhood. Word of a Jew thrust her
forth. Hand of a Jew guided me to this Cold
seeking warmth . . led me to this, City where

133

there are Jews in swarms, in sultry pools, in
tumults !

She was still. The wind was a steel broom
sweeping the ice of the world against her hud-
dling over a lamp and a stove. The frail room
held. She heard no wind, she saw no room. She
sat swaying within an aureole of smutted heat
grey-faced, over the black mass of her dress : and
her hair knotted against her throat.

"Tell me," she whispered aloud, "who has un-
derstood? Harry was wrong, he did not under-
stand you, Christ. He misused your words. You
have forgiven him. But who . . who understands?
You were a Jew, and we alone who are not Jews
worship and quote you, Jesus. Why is that? You
were a Jew? The Jews saw God . . they only
during those angry ages before Christ had the
Grace to choose God,. Why do they leave you,
Christ, you and your words in silence? Are they
so close to you they do not hear you? Are they so
close to you that they are you?"

Her hands clasped above her face. "But we
are better ! sweeter ! ' '

— Do we not understand? Are we children,
Lord? Are we children playing with the fire of
Thy Word? Who is grown among men? She
thought of Leon.

— Your lips knew not Christ nor Love. . . Yet
who beside you has known me, who beside you
has healed me?

"Tell me !" her voice was high in the stark cold
room. She rose* up on her knees, and her arms
and her words were higher than her face. "Tell

134

me, God! How dare you discriminate against us!
You have no chosen children. We all are your
Chosen . . we who choose you. . . Lord, I want
to know. Do you hear? I choose to know. Not
what my breasts want . . let them starve. You
shall not turn from me now. Look at me, Lord. r '

Her hands drooped. Her face fell like a flower
suddenly burned. She lay crumpled upon the
floor within the City. "Will you just look at me,
Lord? What have 11 I shall not die. Yet what
life have I? Think of my past . . think of the
girl I was . . the girl bright and brave : think of
the mother I was ! Here I am. My life is sold—
for this ! I must know. Do you hear me when I
cry so within myself? else — what is this? I must
know! This horror of hurt . . from Fanny, the
Fanny of my friends, of my beloved, my child—
now this here, this dirt ! And it is true. Dirt is
true. What else? Have I sinned? What act of
ignorance have I sinned in? WTiat is this sense of
holiness that will not leave? Which is it, God? I
must know: I have sinned or I am holy?"

Her mouth was full of tears . . good tears, for
they were warm. She was aware of her feet,
down there, cold . . lumps that denied herself for
she was living warm.

She lay on the iron bed. She slept.

From heavy sleep Fanny awoke exhausted. Her
eyes opening were broken by a world cutting in,
sharp and strange world of impossible impacts,

135

which somehow had been away. She lifted her
stiff weight from bed, she had slept in her clothes.
She remembered the warm world wrapping sud-
den about her in the night bringing her sleep.
She looked at the cold lamp, at the rust-stained
bluish stove on the floor. — Where is it? . . She
took off her clothes, knowing that she must bathe
in cold water. Her body thirsted. There was an-
other world . . an imperious imagining . . to
blot the real within her. World, world, world!
The voice in her was small. — I lose myself. I
go forth breaking against cold and stone. She
was athirst for water.

The bite of the water on her flesh was good . .
it made the world she must face realler. It bit
under her arms and over her throat, it drew like a
knife between her legs. It made her fingers
wool. . . .

— I am a sunny girl getting ready to ride with
Harry. Warm good feeling . . riding and laugh-
ing! The pear blossoms are out! . . A dismal
room with its grey bulged walls and its patched
pipings. About the bathtub in which lay her
naked flesh, a stained and rusted bathtub, the
floor was matted with cold oilcloth, color-
less with many feet. Now under her gay ones !

— Come! . . a dim hall, reeking with night-
shadows still, plethoric as if it had swallowed too
much darkness, quenched the white shoulders of
Fanny Dirk. "I hold you," it seemed to say. "I
am this dingy house and I am putting you out."

She shut the door behind her. The street. She
took it in, bravely forcing herself to know that

136

it was new: she had never seen it. There was a
clarity about her. The world was a delirium
carved, a frenzy frozen and sculpted. Only within
her was dimness of soft flesh.

The street was empty. Piles of snow, color of
drowned rats, lay in the gutters. A cat moved
gaunt. The two rows of houses stood even, scrap-
ing the sky. They were damp-soiled scabs . .
brown red . . they held their secrets as dry blood
holds a wound. They hated the grey wideness
which they scraped at above them, clutching with
pitiful flourish of eave and chimney at a buried
sun.

Fanny walked. Her feet struck the pavement.
She felt how she touched the street. A thing deep
terrible living her feet touched as she walked. It
gave to her footfall, it did not rise in response.
— Tear off the scab
Blood would gush!

"I had better buy rolls." She pressed her one
nickel in her palm. She would have money that
night.

A woman with long waist broken to the show of
underwear swabbed the floor of the Bakeshop.
Her arms were naked like the pole of her swab-
cloth. All she was long articulated bone, swathed
in moist grey. Her face, swinging above her
work, smiled on Fanny.

Fanny sat at a dark table in the smell of dough,
seeing the long face suddenly widen bright: see-
ing eyes in a woman, tender through the
greased shadow of sawdust floor and a counter
heavy with bread.

137

"I'll have just a nickel's worth of rolls. "

The woman came back: she placed before
Fanny fried eggs, coffee, butter and bread. "Why
haven't ye been in, of late, silly f "

— She understands! The understanding of the
woman stopped Fanny's words. She was not
hurt by this sharp tenderness like green in the
crass mass of the morning.

She ate. — I must eat slow. She could not eat
slowly. Something within her beyond her de-
voured the food.

She could not say Thank you, standing to go.
She could not give her nickel burning in her palm.
The woman swabbed her feet.

"Ye 're in the way," she mock-scolded. Fanny
was glad.

Street! — Why does no thing stay as it was?
So I can catch up?

She breathed heavily. Her head was light, save
in. the very back under the coiled hair which
tipped downward pulling up at her chin. She
felt her stomach. Her knees were light. She
felt her feet. — I could laugh! I am striped in
heaviness and lightness. Laugh then !

The two walls of the street fell forward : in the
air above the gutter they crashed in silence to-
gether and disappeared. The City was a maze of
twisting streams. . . Two men passed. They were
arm in arm. They were sleek and full in the
black coats shaped to their bodies. Their cheeks
and their eyes were sleek and full of themselves.
About the round head of each there was an Aura.
Thick troubled, it beat outward like an empris-

138

oned gas. A gaseous colorless world it was about
the head of each, that veered against the other,
drew in, thrust out, hostile. Impenetrable two
men passed, arm in arm.

. . A woman passed her. Her eyes were red
spots in the soot of her face. The loose wide flesh
of her feet at each step hurt. Her hands fell like
the heads of slaughtered hens. Behind her, at-
tached to the grey shawl that covered her head, a
Wake like a scarf dragged dimly dark. It wav-
ered from side to side : it was a disconsolate flut-
ter forever behind her. A little boy crossed the
street at her back : the scarf lifted, it avoided his
bright eyes: it sagged down, toward an ashcan,
skimming the filth. . . .

. . . Fanny stopped on the curb to let a wagon
pass. Huge horses drew it. They were black with
white-stroked withers, hair gathered thick above
their pounding hoofs. A thin man perched above
them ; behind him, the iron cart heaped high with
tawney dirt. He was imprisoned, this pallid man,
between the soil and the horses. His hands held
reins. From his white eyes two little Streams of
red rose, curled, flecked at the horses' steaming
flanks, receded, thrust in the dirt behind, moved
circling fitful about the soil and the horses. The
roll of the wheels, the clank of the great hoofs, the
cart's metallic strain were a tissue of hostile
voices hunting the still red search that streamed
from his white eyes.

— There are no ones and one. Yon get in my
way! You don't exist! . . She saw how this world

139

was a manifold of veins, carrying blood, building
flesh of life and house.

—I flow. I too am livid, flowing through You.

She saw that the walls of the streets were once
more in their places. She saw that men's and
women's heads were once more shut: . . the beat-
ing angry solitary worlds, black, red, grey . .
spherical, streamer-like . . were sealed once more
in skulls of men and women.

Fanny's new place of work was in the shop of
a fur-dresser.

She sat at a long table. She looked above her
plying hands at the stooped forms of women
across from her : looking above their plying hands
at her. Between their shoulders, the window . .
gold letters of the Sign standing upon it.

A. RACHMANN
FURS

They were in a room like a foul mouth that
spoke to the world gold words, dropped this
amenity upon the sweep of Elevated structure
just abreast the window. Trains passed. Ban-
ners of cluttered stationary lives made gay in
passing . . sweep of black particles in the gay
flourish of passing. Passing! As Fanny worked,
the smooth flat tracks of the Elevated trains stood
like a way beyond the world. One entered heavy
and thick into the train . . one was swept gay !

Fanny worked.

Skins . . dead dusty skins to be ripped and
sponged and fitted into shapes. Shapes that were

140

insult to the skins. Her hands raped life. In the
filth and shadow of the shop, she felt the mutter
of creatures defiled and effaced into dead forms
by hands that were not even bloody.

— Furry skins live.

Boney hands defile you.

I am a woman and you are under me !

She felt that they of the shop were very strong,
were great . . marring the wistful lives of crea-
tures with warm furs : running thread and needle
through them, pressing cloth and water against
them. She felt that she dwindled each moment of
this work which made her so superior and strong
against live creatures. She defiled herself . .
she worked to live a desecration upon life.

And then (this work was familiar, she had held
this kind of job before) the life of the furs, the
life of the girls, the life of her hands died. Fanny
knew again her eyes and her black hair and the
wondrous world dancing forever within the wall
of her brow.

—Beating . . beating . .ache. I can pay for
that dear woman's breakfast. 0 I can never
pay for what she did for me. I don't have to.
The woman was good. Good is what you need not
pay for. Sun . . women doing good . . love . .
sudden discoveries of You in a paid world. I am
glad. I have not lost sight of Goodness. God!
Does one have to pay for You, God? Or have I
destroyed You, paying too much? Should I have
refused to pay, when the sick voice of my soul

141

said You must! Or haven't I paid enough! . .
Can't we know any thing, Lord?

She was aware of her hands beneath her, of the
scissors, of the extended furry deaths against the
filthy table. — We're paying. We're paying?
For what? . . Well, we're paying.

She was strong. — I can keep this up forever.
Perhaps I shall never die ?

There was a starkness in her breast, as of a
thought suddenly crystal, suddenly shaped of her-
self, crowding her organs.

— Shall I never die? Am I eternal, seeking . .
seeking? Am I in Hell? Is Hell true after all,
and am I in it? This is not Heaven!

She had the sense of an eternity in her hands
paying, in her brow's ache, paying. — Souls in
Hell . . feel like this?

There lay Time beyond the lettered window.
She looked on a neat little world of Time : Time
ran upon steel tracks, Time carried mites of hu-
man life rigidly down a tiny way. The trains, the
houses, the streets, the wisps of sunny cloud
through the roof's gap . . all was a pasty toy-
world: make-believe: the world of Time and
Space. She gazed on it in passionate condescen-
sion within her sooty workroom, hands paying,
brow in search paying. . . .

Outside. The day above the Town was lovely
with Spring's intimation. Soiled snow- piles
melted in brackish streams. The gutters lay mud-
splashed. Men and women moved drab, undif-
ferentiate through the damp brownness of pave-
ment. But like a wave of butterflies above a

142

mudhole, Spring fluttered hesitant, diaphanous,
young.

Fanny held her face up against downy wings.

—My shoes are torn. She felt the down pull of

her torn shoes under the wings of the Spring. She

knew that because she felt such heaviness of feet,

no one like her prized this afternoon.

She began to walk. She stopped. — You! It
is you! The form, sudden and sheer in its fa-
miliar individuation — Clara Lonergan — stood be-
fore her still, with warm hands clasping her cold
ones.

"You, Fanny!"

"Clara!"

The face of the dark girl : ' * Nearly four years
I have longed to find you."

Fanny's eyes: "Nearly four years . . "

Clara could not speak. "You, you," she kept
repeating, ". . you . ." She focussed her eyes
and saw her. She was still.

Fanny felt: — She knows how I am. This girl
has always loved me.

"Come, we're going to dinner. We're going to
spend the evening. O Fanny ! ' *

Fanny knew that if her eyes could pierce within
the daze of this meeting . . under the Spring, in
the snow-stained street . . she would see Clara
trimly, quietly dressed — richly. Clara hale and
hard and shut.

-This girl has loved me !

They did not speak, walking. Blue night, a
swathing of cottoney blue mist, crept from the
skies, curled the miasmic streets, bundled the

143

rigid Town in its soft glamor. Lights made little
rents. Fanny moved beside the hard thrust of
this girl . . — She has loved me! . . through the
blue warm-ness.

They entered the subway, they rode, they came
up. They stepped from a bright street into a
bright long room — facetted in white round cloths
and mirrors. The two chairs held them across
the white space of their table.

< ' Shall I order ? ' ' said Clara. * * I '11 order. Her
eyes, deep and many colored like a pansy's black,
felt the lean blade of Fanny's poverty: caressed
it, bled against it. She ordered
Oysters

Broiled chicken with asparagus, sweet po-
tatoes, peas
ice-cream and cake
and coffee.

"I'm so happy!" she said, her eyes flooding out
upon the face of Fanny. "I am so glad we have
met at last!"

— She asks me no question of myself. Not that
she fears lest I ask questions of her. She wants
that. Your eyes and your lips so finely cut, so
frozen in their revolt . . how long ago was that?
. . ask : I should ask of yourself. I cannot. Let
me sit here, Clara, quiet. The food, 0 the good
food ! Let me sit here in your eyes. I cannot give
you that which my asking of you would mean. I
cannot. There is a little openness between us . .
our separate years. In it I breathe. If you cover
it with your coming close, I shall choke.

144

"We are going to a show," said Clara. " Which
show shall it be?"

"I have seen no play for so long! How should
I know?"

"I'll choose."

She called the waiter. "Bring me an evening
paper."

— So strong and sure of herself! I am weak
beside you . . Am I better than you?

At last Fanny's eyes could open, could meet the
glow of her friend's.

"I am glad we ran into each other . . I am
glad to see you."

Clara was pale. — She is very understanding.
. . No . . not to-night shall I be better than you,
strange girl crowned in your defeat. I know
what you have done. I am glad to be willing to be
weak beside you.

Once again Clara smiled. "Here's a good one.
Music . . you need music and dancing."

: — I live in music and dance . . .

"01 am so happy! I have missed you, Fanny.
I did not know until there you were gone . . I did
not know . ./' She stopped. Fanny's eyes were
turned inward. — Don't, don't! they said. — The
space between us is what I breathe. There was
silence.

Fanny was weak. She had walked level
through the dark. Now for some time she felt
that she was mounting. Felt this as one would
who tramped in blackness by the strain upon her-
self. She could not touch the essence of her
thoughts, gazing at Clara. They both had left a

145

common world which they had never shared, years
since. What in the sheer uncommonness of their
separate careers was it they felt they shared? It
was very strange to Fanny. They had no mutual
subject. They sat across the table from each
other, mostly in silence. What there had been to
speak of . . Christopher Johns, the Office . . was
dead in them both, was no subject. Yet now they
shared a silence, they shared a pregnancy. — I
am at ease, here, weary, full of food. . . I am
going to listen to music. Mounting, I am at rest !

They sat in the first row of the Balcony. Fanny
knew these two young women . . one not so
young! . . sharp in the motley welter of the
crowd. They were swathed together in one sharp-
ness by the anarchic auras of the other men and
women. Fanny, saw herself: small, pallid, worn
in her black skirt and her dun waist, close to this
girl who had sold her defeat for the clear rose-
colored smartness of her suit, for the diamond pin
under her lovely throat, for the sleek health of her
hair. But her eyes, she felt her eyes greater than
ever, wandering in the hunger of her face . . the
eyes of Clara were great and were her own.

The music was far away. .. . "This is a tale of
far away, a world I have left and forgotten. ' ' The
curtain rose. The actors were clad in costumes
of 1840. White Pierrot danced through the glit- -
ter of ladies in prim bonnets, gleaming bared
breasts, hooped skirts Ehymed words, words of
love and fidelity and perfection chimed with the
pelt of taffetas and brocade, of powdered hands
flirting fans : and white Pierrot with eyes lost in

146

the paint of a gay world, seeking love and perfec-
tion.

— -People do not dream this, way. I was not
alive then. This is a costume comedy with pretty
airs. Romantic . . means false, in time and in
place. Fanny struggled now against a world
falsely remembeired. — This is not true, not
yours. Pierrot was in love with a fine lady who
tinkled at a clavichord . . gowned in sheer black
with her white shoulders bare Her flirting shoul-
ders and her painted lips took his round love : his
deep was lost in her shadow : Pierrot was lost. He
left her broken: and another man with words of
love sharp like hooks to catch her flesh caught in
her shoulders (they had not turned for Pierrot),
turned her round, won her.

.. . A sad play with laughing music . . little
streams of water running up the dark side of a
mountain. Impossible . . unreal. Fanny saw the
breaking audience. It rose and splintered in the
new light house. Men and women suddenly dis-
tinct like the jewels in their hair, like the hard
smiles, hard lines of face against the nerw blare
of the lighted house. No. The play was real.
Laughter went twinkling up the steep of moun-
tains. Laughter flowed up hill. That was the way
of laughter. — You men and women falling away
downhill, have you nerver laughed? Upward ! up-
ward! Fanny pressed Clara's arm.

They stood in the night. The breast of Fanny
flowed with her hurt and her life: her heart was
liquid at last: her hurt and her life, pressed so
long against the urge of Clara, melted and

147

Page 147, twelfth line from top, "shadow"
should read shallow"

flowed. She took the hands of her friend. She
pressed them. She knew what was to be. . .

They walked through the broken throng of men
and women parting, waiting: through the bright
weave of carriage calls, whispers, farewells:
through the new freshet of the City's stream
spreading in blue and green and gold, soon lost.
They walked in silence. They were putting off a
moment of decision. The Elevated Structure
stood like a sentence. Fanny's arm that had held
Clara's dropped to her side. A train, jingling
with lights, drew past. . .

— It goes and goes, it comes to the window
where I work, to the window where I stand this
instant at a table. I tear and rip . . I work in
the thick shadows of dead life. I look at the train
that passes. It is there !

Fanny held out her hand. . . A little man,
square black beard, small red lips, sharp greedy
eyes, stood with his hairy hands upon her shoul-
ders. Mr. Eachmann ! — She sought the hand of her
friend.

Clara's lips sharpened.

66 Where do you live?" she spoke. "I want to
see you soon."

Fanny shook her head. Mr. Rachmann went.
The lips of Clara parted, they were wet.

* * I do not understand. ' '

"Look at me, Clara."

"You won't let me see you I"

"0 do understand! Can you see me? Can we
see each other, Dear?"

Clara's face broke.

148

"You can't do this. You can't. You don't
know what you mean. Let me come. I am all
alone. 0 don't judge me, Fanny!"

"You know I don't judge you."

"Let me see you . . once."

They were rigid in struggle.

"Clara, I am afraid to see you."

. . . Still . . .

"I am going a way that is terrible and un-
known. It does not get easier. There is no get-
ting used to it. Each moment, there is yearning
to turn . . get out . . fall away.."

The girl straightened. "You think I do not un-
derstand," came her clearer voice. "But I do.
More than you, perhaps. . . . You need not give
me your address."

Fanny was warm and broken against the clear-
ness of Clara. — What does this mean? Why do
I reject her? She was still.

"Good-by," said Clara,

— You need me. You need me? Say that you
need me, girl.

The hand of each held more than the hand of
the other.

"It's all right. . ." A moment Clara smiled.
Then her eyes looked within, they met the eyes of
Fanny deeply in a far space where they were not
apart.

"Good-by."

— There is love in you. Love, love. What wis-
dom? You are not saying, Good-by. You are say-
ing, Love 1

149

Fanny was still. And alone.

Without turning she walked. Swift walking.
She was aware of herself walking swift beneath
the Elevated trains, and of not moving at all. She
did not like this shadowy way with lights upon
the sides of it like little creatures burning to get
in. It was full of noise and heaviness and boom-
ing steel. A side street . . quieter, cold . . swung
to her face. Southward again. But now an Ave-
nue all open to the stars.

The tall buildings rose melting into mist. Stars
flickered faint over the stillness of their pointed
thrusts. Theyi rose from stone, rigid, equal: a
stone City lay before her and the houses stood one
stuff with the hard death beneath her feet. Men
and women, like house, like street, passed on:
wrapped in stone muffledness. They were muf-
fled in dim rigor. They were masked.

The City was masked. Corner of wall soaring,
clusters of passers-by, the buzz of motors pulling
with rubbered gait through the damp asphalt . .
were features of a Mask. She felt its stillness, its
stifled comfort: underneath, a heated flesh she
could not touch.

Her feet, beating the street, beat with her eyes
and soul against the Mask of a world. It was un-
rolling. Sharp stone towers swathed in blue mist,
private mansions mansard-roofed, fagade of
church, flourish of store with its show-windows
alight like gems set in the pallor of the night . .

150

masked, hid away. She was unmoving while the
dominant procession pressed before her. And the
men and women, sparse, impervious, aloof, were
details of the pageant that defiled. Yet it seemed
to Fanny she beheld an act deeply ceremonial, re-
ligious. The high masked world . . human and
stone . . became a chant, lifted in stilled ecstasy
unto some god. . . .

Her room was outside all this. The gas jet she
lit stood on the whitewashed wall, made it orange,
made shadow of bureau and chair stand stiff like
marionettes . . stiffly agile . . upon the orange
glare. She was shut in : the pageant and the hymn
to a lost god were far away. Ye,t now in the room
it was to her as if she stood at a window. She
looked out secure upon the song and pageant of
the world . . .

— I am very quiet. A terrible thing has come
to me. I have met Clara, the one person in the
world who knows of me and cares . . and I have
sent her away. A terrible thing has taken place.
I am quiet.

She was afraid of thinking . . afraid of how
clear she saw. She took off her clothes, she
turned out the light. She lifted wide the little
window that lifted her eyes above a jagged finger
of roof to the sky. Lavendar-blue it was, washed
in pale streakings of eternal fire. She lay
stretched-out in her bed : warm, with eyes so wide
she could feel the night pour in to them. . . Mani-
fold Night! Night of the straining of flame
through space, Night of the march of stone masks
above the softness of men. Night

151

A question stood sharp up: — "Why did I want
to turn round, walking downtown? Why did I
not turn round? What was the thought always
there as I walked — as of a face and a will watch-
ing "

Fanny smiled. "You wish she had followed
you. She didn't! Never fear. She is not that
sort . . strong unsentimental Clara."

Fanny saw Clara naked in a wide soft bed.
Very sharp she saw her : the small clear breasts,
the fluted strain of the thighs, the tender cushion
of her belly. A man-form, vague, bore down upon
her belly. Fanny could see no more. She feared
to sense that if she dared see more she might see
Johns! She saw a desecration as if the talons
and beak of a great bird tore at the thighs of
Clara . . strips of the flesh of herself. She could
not bear it. Her palms clutched over her eyes and
ears. She turned writhing upon her stomach. She
was still.

— Poor Harry! . . .

"No," she said aloud. "You wanted her to fol-
low and she did not. She respects you too much.
Can't you respect yourself? What you said to
Clara was true . . the long and terrible Way that
you must go. Cannot you say to yourself what
you said to Clara?" Once more Fanny lay in her
bed straight- stretched and her eyes open: once
more the light poured in upon her eyes.

Her head was light. It lifted her like a balloon
above the City. She was afloat above the brittle
stone. The world was black and was suffused by
fires. The light was the Black breathing.

152

"It is true," said her mouth. "I am falling
upward. I have nothing to do with this. I am
falling upward."

Her words lifted upon the Night that poured
in her eyes. She saw her words. She saw her-
self. She drank her words and herself.

— I hope it is not Johns who is keeping Clara.
No. It is not he. Clara would not . . even if he
would . . after what was. Why do I care? I am
not done with Clara ! . . But I did right. I must
say No and No . . endlessly No to all the world's
questions. That is saying Yes — to what? How
strange it is, this Being in me that flies. I am the
wings of myself.

She was very light. She was afloat in an im-
penetrable Dark which yet she pierced for she
was suffusion of light. She lay there, eyes and
mouth wide open, limp palms at her sides, and
heard the cadence of her breath.

— I am not unhappy, she thought. Then her
eyes closed. . . .

She was in a station of the Subway. Clara was
beside her. Crowds surged in four great streams.
She lost Clara. She was afraid. Streams dark
and turgid beneath the crust of the earth were men
and women. She saw ten thousand hats and
gloves and skirts in sharp detail. She saw beneath
the pandemonium of colored cloths, straw, feath-
ers, leather . . each one sheerly alone . . a single
Skin. She felt the Skin grey-white. The straws
and silks and collars pricked the Skin: and the
Skin hurt. She wanted to be naked of these vari-
colors. They hurt. The crowds flowed on. Upon

153

the faces of the men and women were smiles : the
faces were not naked, they were covered with
smiles. Upon the feet of the men and women were
shoes. Shoes and smiles pricked in hard waves
on the grey- white Skin.

She was aware of this steel cavern under the
crust of the earth where four streams ploughed
and mangled upon each other. On the steel were
casings of cement. It was rough. It cut against
the quick of her nails. It pricked the steel that
held the edge of the earth.

She was aware of this all one, in a great hurt,
as she lay asleep with her skin against the rough
stuff of her blanket.

Upon the Subway cave was the stone street.
Upon the stone street were the buildings. In the
cave, in the street, in the buildings, flowed the
people. They were a black blood flowing every-
where. Here they were thickest. They caught
the rigid Subway cave : it rocked. The street was
rocked with the rocking hole below. The tower-
ing houses swung and dipped in a steep measure,
over the streets, over the plunging Subway
throng, under the Sky. A mighty rhythm ran
with the black blood through the stone world. It
danced. The Subway rolled and bounced. Build-
ings bent down, jerked high, circled their points
in a great Dance under a sky that was still.

Fanny watched the dancing world as if it were
close to her : as if it were upon her like her heav-
ing breast.

"I am the Dancer," she cried.

She danced. She was still, she was in bed. But

154

she danced. In the veer of houses, in the see-saw
of streets, Fanny danced. Over her head she was
aware of a sky steadfast.

Fanny danced faster. Towers of stone leaped
up now, leaving the streets. Towers of stone
soared like rockets against the still stars and
came back. Gutters twirled: crowds wove into
pythonic knots. The skies caught Dance, like fire.
The stars moved very finely; they did not swing
far from their orbits : rather they tremored, they
shone in vibrance, they sang like high notes very
fast . . and the sky swung long, swung so slow
like a tide through the warp of trilling stars that
it was hard to know that the sky moved. In the
clothes of the dancing Subway throng there were
bugs: they danced. In the roofs of the street,
there were stars: they danced. Fanny saw the
bugs dancing, and the dancing stars.

"I am the Dancer," she cried. She danced
through the Night. . . .

She opened her eyes at last to a day pale worn-
out. She lay in her bed, under the haggard morn-
ing as under a wet sheet. She was unable to
move.

"I am sick," she said aloud. Then again she
slept.

When she awoke it was still day. Sharp still-
ness. She heard the blood beat in her temples.
Her body was blanched, it was dead. Her head
lay hot and swollen above an inert body.

155

She shut her eyes. The day swathed her head
in myriad light shawls. One by one the shawls
withdrew, they were gone. She opened her eyes
against black Nothingness. It raced into her eyes,
it won her swollen head. But her body it could
not touch. Her body like a knife-thrust lay, white
and still, within the belly of night.

— I must get up. She tried to get up and could
not. She lay in her warm water. Her body pre-
vailed. The water was cold. It was dry. Her
head scolded against her stricken body. Her
body endured like a bar of steel. It was solid
death in a melted world that was dying.

There were days and there were nights. There
were nights and there were days. The world
winked open, the world winked shut. Bain drib-
bled into her window : sunbeams deflected lay like
gold dust against it. Below, in the houses, feet
fell; voices rose, fell; shadows of human will
writhed up the twisted stairs to her white room:
no substance followed. She was alone: her
blanched dead body and her boiling head. Be-
neath her a great Void in which the sounds of
doors and feet and words, the rumble of a cart,
angled about like little balls of celluloid in a great
hollow caldron.

Day night day . . the world winked dimmer.
Fanny's form lay like a wave- washed beam on the
edge of the sea. Color was long since washed.
The water sucked at the meat and the juice of the
wood. It was porous light, it was rotten before
the ceaseless suck of the water of the sea. Her

156

head was lower. It no longer boiled above her
body.

Then Fanny shut her eyes: and her eyes were
all of her head that was not like her body . . dim
and porous and sucked.

"Is this what all was for?" said her eyes.
"Have I gone through all this — all this — to die
like a cat in a barn?"

She knew she was not to die.

"I am going to die. My life has been nonsense
. . . and now I am going to die."

She knew she was not to die.

Her eyes were still. There was a great Pain
clenching her breast and her bowels. No pain had
been before.

"How long have I been lying here? How many
days . . is it weeks? . . I have not eaten? Will
nobody come?"

Her body was Pain. Her body was coming
alive, so it was Pain.

"Will no one come? Will you let me die like
a cat? I am thirsty . . I am sick ! I cannot move.
I danced too much. I am paralyzed with Danc-
ing. Don't let me die."

Her. body was coming alive, so that it cried.

"Edith . . Edith, save me! Harry — won't you
nurse me? I have nursed you so often. Water!
My child! 0 Mother .... Clara I did not
mean "

Her body was coming alive, so that it was
afraid. It screamed, it lied, it abused : it wanted
the water of life.

"It is too late. I am alone. Something was

157

wrong with yon, Fanny. You seemed good and
sound enough. But something was wrong with
you, Fanny. . . Look at you now: you Fanny
Dirk, you bright Fanny . . mother and wife . .
you now."

She knew she was not to die. She knew there
was nothing wrong.

"Does God send clean creatures to a death like
this? Death in a stinking room where no one
comes to see what is the matter after days and
days. Starving to death alone, in New York . .

0 how rotten you must have been!"
She knew she was not rotten.

"Is there nothing left? No one single thing?
Mother, I can't find you. Edith, I can't see you.
Harry — Edith — ell gone. Is there nothing left?
Yes: one thing left."

Fanny lifted her shoulders faintly from the bed
with straining elbows. Her heavy head fell back-
ward : her eyes swung dizzy toward the ceiling.

"God! you aren't much for me. But I believe
in you. Do you hear? Even now. I am not rot-
ten, God. I have not done wrong, God. You must
hear me, for I believe in you, somehow, my Fa-
ther. This is all right. This is not just — this is
not unjust. It is part of the world. I am leaving
the world. But I have been a part. I believe
that, God. I have been a part and you need all
parts. You have needed me, God?"

There were tears in her eyes . . cool good tears.

1 i Say you have needed me, God, for a part in your
. .something. Whatever it is. You Ve done with
me, now. But you've used me. Haven't you

158

used me, God! You're casting me in the ash-heap
I know. Can't you say at least ' Thank you' be-
fore I am gone?"

Fanny sank back upon her pillow. Tears made
cool stains down the hot parch of her cheeks. Her
eyes roved through the opaque bright room,
breaking against the cruel harshness of familiar
objects. Her hands against each other on her
breast tremored and fell apart. Her mouth
moved. — Is this the end!

She knew there was no end.

A great Peace came. Her body was soft and
enfolded. Warm waters held her close, washed
her of anguish, washed her of doubt and of weak-
ness, washed her at last of self. Fanny was per-
fect in sleep like a child in its mother. There
was a smile on her mouth.

159

LONG hours the room with its still freight
moved through the world. Unbroken, like
a seed, buried and hard in the earth. At
dusk the door opened slowly. Clara stepped into
the room.

The prostrate friend in the stiff iron bed, black
hair matted over the hot white face, the walls,
very still, very cold, shutting this beaten flesh
into their death . . struck Clara in the door.

Her hands clutched her throat. She knelt be-
side the bed. Her hands and cheeks took in the
heavy breath, the burning brow, voluptuously.
" Thank God," she murmured. Then the luxury
of sense and of articulation went. Clara was
action.

Ten minutes later, a physician stood with her
at the bedside.

Fanny opened her eyes to a world softened and
new. A warm world, she accepted like a child,
without wonder. Over the gas-jet was a shade of
green. The walls cast a kind dimness. On the
deep windowsill a brazier burned. Bottles stood
sheer from the shadow, blue and black and brown
. . warm emanations of a good will they seemed
in their suggestion that being ill she was nursed,
being weak fortified. They stood beneath the ten-
der steam of the brazier like good words.

The room was warm. It had warm breath. It

160

was alive and gentle wrapping her about like fond
extensions of these quiet, these brand-new sheets.
. . . Magic ! all good ... all so more natural than
that hard seed of the past she had dwelt in,
been imprisoned in : long walls, rigid, shutting her
up, lifting her softness hard above the City's
hardness. Fanny drew out her hands from the
warm covers. Fingers touched, tried each other:
fingers pressed in the moist flesh of her palms . .
lean hands yet new. The room was a caress.

Through the moving door came a figure very
high: figure slim and athrob beneath a drawn
green gown, under black hair let loose upon its
shoulders.

Clara pressed sheer through the caressing room.
Clara ! Magic and wonderlessness, most magical
of all. Clara ! with her hair let down, in a green
wrap. Her loom was the substance of the warm-
ing air: her being sheer over the bed was the
mouth that had uttered all these transforming
words: the blue alcohol flame, the bottles, medi-
cine, milk, the soothing walls about the fended
light, herself, newest word of all, that lay in a
clean bed . . the truest and the sweetest word of
all this mouth that was Clara.

"Dear, dear," came Clara's voice. "You are
awake and you are better."

She sat beside her. She gave her broth. Fanny
was soothed, in a oneness swallowing the hot
broth : she was one with Clara. . . Dimmed gas,
bowed throat of her friend and agile hands hold-
ing the cup and the spoon were one, articulately,
with her own heavy eyes and the lips she felt as

161

she opened them and swallowed. There was her
will, there were the features of her will. What
touched her eyes and her skin, her ears and her
taste was a symphonic unity which she could love,
as she lay swathed within it, as a child loves its
own body. . . .

Clara slept in a big armchair which had ap-
peared in the room's transforming. Each day
came the Doctor. He had a little ruddy VanDyck
beard and eyes that twinkled. He had soothing
hands. He was a part of Clara . . hence of Fan-
ny. When he left, there was his soothing wake
in the soft brown air of the room.

"You are silent," she said to him, "like a
canoe. ' 9

"Well, we'll paddle you back to shore and
health, " he smiled. She saw the eyes of Clara
beam excitement.

"You have not spoken," Clara said, "you have
not spoken before ! ' '

— I love my silence. Fanny lay back in her new
thick pillows. I am going to be silent.

' ' Soon we can bring you away from this dread-
ful place. Can't we, Doctor?"

He nodded.

— I shall keep my silence as long as I can.

Fanny looked with warm eyes at the glass of
milk which Clara held for her. — I could hold it
now. But I won't. She did not speak.

And Clara spoke little. Words about her com-
fort, words about her food, words of endearing

162

reproof when Fanny woke too early or did not
finish her toast.

But already Clara was no longer herself. Fanny
saw her long dark face, haggard now and pale
with heavy eyes. She saw the hand that feeding
trembled a bit.

"You are not a mother. Yet I am your child.
Just a little longer. For you are not a mother.
I am a mother."

Her eyes shone happy with an unuttered prom-
ise: "I shall be a mother to you. You shall see."
But Fanny dared not speak. For she knew when
her words came, there would come from within
her, deeper within her, her words' denial.

Clara's strong hands, tense like a cord, soothed
her gown, clutched her shoulders, lifted her so
that she could drink.

"To-morrow, dear, to-morrow we bundle you
into a cab. At last! Away from this dreadful
place. ' '

"Where?"

"To my place," said Clara.

— I shall not speak . . yet awhile. For I am
afraid of the word that will come when I speak.

The girl knelt down at the bed. Her head lay
on Fanny's breast. Her hands went wistful
searching to upon her eyes, upon her mouth. Her
eyes were shut and her lips moist upon the gown
of Fanny. . . ...

163

FIVE

CLARA

FANNY sat in sun that was caressed and
tamed by high blue curtains. She shad-
owed a mirror in her hand . . it gave her
eyes her face . . with a sharp shoulder. — They
used not to be sharp! . . Wrist tiring with its
tiny burden, arm taut and thin in the blue house-
gown Clara made her wear welded the silver glass
with its sheer image to her face. Her eye, seek-
ing its own secret, worked unaware through the
medium of parched hand, spent wrist, peaked
shoulder. No glamor was between her eye and
its reflection.

Her face was overlaid with shadows: subtly,
terribly it was increased beyond its natural buoy-
ance as if sudden in that Night she had danced
through all of life had made invasion of her large
eyes, of her delicate nose, of her mouth quick like
a young leaf, and forced its burden on them. She
had brought from her home the face of a girl : she
looked at a face branded her own and the world's.

About this weighted face the room she sat in:
cushioned, satined, a room of crude caresses. She
alone was salient peering into this image of her-
self. She alone had mass and had dimension : and
all of it upon her little features, drawing them,
deforming them, making them ugly. Making
them herself.

— I must face this ! I have become a person.

She felt herself as a sharp weight set in soft-
ness. So she was upheld : but she was free. There

167

was a bar between herself . . — I am true ! . .
and these warm falsehoods Clara had set her in.

— Saved me by them ! I know that. You are all
Lies about me, yet me who am true you have
saved. Without you what could Clara's naked
love have done? Without you wouldn't she be
dead as I was? Your milk, your covers, your
warmth . . lies : 0 my still bed, 0 sun that falls
about the grey of my shoulders like a lawn of
Spring- upon an autumn earth — bless you, for
there is quiet in you yet, and it has let me think.
. . When I am at last all in thought, I am in the
way of the end. To end is to be healed. I under-
stand that. Life is a wound that only life can heal.

— I might have died without beginning! You,
lies, saved me. What does that mean?

She lay back in her chair and the mirror fell
to her lap. — I have lost so much hair . . black
lovely . . don't think of that, that is not think-
ing! All you must fall as the hair fell. Fanny's
eyes closed. She slept.

She came to waking with her head forward and
her hand upheld, watching her face in the glass.
Clara was in the door.

— Did my looking at her asleep . . how she has
grown old ! . . make her raise the glass like that to
her shut eyes? Then they opened. Clara was
afraid of the displacement her thoughts might
make : she moved in her room and sent out words

in it as if the air were tight with some subtle,
feeling substance easily overflowed.

"How are you, dearie? . . Been sleeping ?"

She laid a bunch of violets in Fanny's lap.

Fanny smiled, her eyes and her hands clasping
the flowers thanked her.

" I 'm so much better. Where have you been ? ' '

"Just shopping."

Fanny had asked no such question before. Clara
sensed beneath it the significant stir of her
friend's mind once more into the outer world. The
outer world ! What was going to be when Fanny
once took note of her own' world? She could
not talk, for she was afraid. She drew a chair be-
side her in the sun, and held her hand and was
still.

"You are looking better. I have a broiler for
you. Now you must begin to eat."

Her stress stroked a wish: Fanny should eat
long, must lose herself for a long time in eating.

"I have been thinking," Fanny said. "The
sun's so good, I'd like to walk in it."

"Dearie, it's cold and raw out."

"I know it is."

"It's only good in a warm room . . like this."

"I know."

Fanny's hand clasped over Clara's, silencing
her. They sat in silence. With gazes long and
almost parallel they thought of the sun that was
good only in a warm room.

"My room," thought Clara.

"Whose room?" thought Fanny, , ,

169

"Clara tell me, . . you were not shopping. Why
can't you tell me where you were?"

"Dear, when you're well — "

"I am well now. A little weak, but well. Didn't
you say yourself — "

"I've been with him."

"You needn't hide it. Don't you think I know?"

"Yes, Fan. But it's all so untrue, since you are
here."

"He must be good, never to come around."

"He knows all about you . . and he won't come
— until I tell him it 's alright. He has been good.
He has left me alone. Well — he knows if he
didn't—"

"Tell him to come," said Fanny.

Clara jumped up. She was afraid and uncer-
tain. She knew not why she was so. "I must
see about dinner." She tossed off her hat and
was gone.

It was a little flat. The dining room, the living
room, the bed room, were compact and warm in
dull brown, rose, blue. They were retiscent
rooms, stiff proper little places furnished as with
sedate conventions. Naught of vice, naught of
abandon about them: they had no strength but
they were full of ease. Like married old ladies,
they were at rest on something very sure. Fanny
did not understand them. But in her fever she
had taken and used them as a babe its nurse.

Fanny and Clara ate, almost in silence. Fanny's

170

half chicken . . she made her friend take the
other half . . was a luscious problem. She must
eat it fast . . before it got col<l or spoiled . . it
held her like a spell in its succulent evanescent
glow. It lay in the white plate the color of sun-
stone.

" Since I have been here," she said, "no one
has come to your place. No one. You've broken
up your whole life because of me. Dear Clara . .
that's a hard thing for me to know."

"I've had no time for my friends. I've had
too anxious, too wonderful a time, nursing you,
Dear."

"I was very sick?" Fanny smiled. "When I
looked in the glass today I knew that. I'm an
old woman, Clara."

The girl shook her head. " Don 't talk that way ! ' '
Her eyes were full on Fanny with a joy that was
not denial. She did not mind. "You are not
old," she said. "But you're mature . . . some-
how I suppose, next to all us, you must seem old
to yourself. You are ripe, Fanny. You are
glorious." Her face glowed with the hard re-
pressiveness against her feeling which was her
only show of feeling.
"Come, now . . to bed."

She helped her to undress, diffident but sure:
the gestures of a nurse swathed in a mist of senti-
ment of a bridegroom. She smoothed the covers :
she placed a hand on Fanny's brow pressing her
head within the pillow, folding the soft quilt at
her chin. She did not kiss her other than so, with
her hands. But once, in those gigantic days of the

171

shadow of the Church, of the shadow of what else
that had come and was to come! had Clara's lips
touched Fanny.

Fanny lay in Clara's bed . . for a month Clara
had slept beside her in a cot. And Clara, by the
low table lamp that drooped above her shoulder
shedding a bloom upon her neck, read aloud a
story. . . .

Words were like pebbles against an iron wall.
They rang upon a sudden sense in Fanny of the
bed she was in. Bed large and deep with hang-
ings of lavender, bed all about her like strong
arms of a mother she had never known yet hers !
. . Clara sharp within it . . sharp breasts, sharp
thigh, sharp tenderness of stomach : and the vague
black manform looming! . .this bed about her.
Its arms were warm and were hostile. There was
care in them, mother's care, and yet they had no
sense in their great balm of what she was they
shielded. Fanny lay . . the words of Clara read-
ing against her were futile . .in the arms of an
alien creature who had given her birth. Being
of shame, being of denial of herself, and yet she
was its thing. Fanny knew the ineffable rightness
oif her lying there, of her healing there: of this
monstrous mother. From this she must suck life,
from this which was of alien flesh and spirit she
must build herself. Strange angry mother . .
her own ! . . holding Her life and lifting her above
it.

Words of Clara were little clangors, shells of
sound far off. Fanny lay . . Clara's bed! Clara's

172

bed and his ! . . enswooned in great arms muffing
her and feeding. Very white. . . .

She saw black earth, earth breaking against
rock. In a crevice of stone through loam, through
rotted brush and last year's leaves she saw a root,
swollen and livid-red, thrust a small green shoot :
upon it pendant a cupped bud like a pearl. She
saw in a Spring of sweeping clouds above a
steaming earth, a blood-root blossom. . . .

The clouds were gone, there was mist. There
was earth lost in feathery warm mist. There were
bursts of trees budding . . the feathery mist . .
the blood-root.

Waking she saw this room.

Clara's cot empty. With covers thrown back
it held in its sheets the impress* of her body.
Shades drawn. A purblind light soiled from its
passage through the grey-brick airshaft lay on
the blue and lavender like smut. A gilded radia-
tor buzzed and spat. . . .

Fanny heard Clara in the kitchen getting her
breakfast. The negress maid did not appear be-
fore eleven : and this morning Clara was going to
New Jersey to see a married sister who was very
ill.

She stood in the doorway. The sooty shade of
the room lay in her face, filling the folds of reso-
lution under eyes, beside her mouth, with a harsh
darkness.

— She is not well. She is not happy! Clara
looks herself.

173

— And the room — it is itself.

Fanny felt salience in the ugly morning . . for
the first time felt salience about her.

-It'll go. You '11 put up the shade. You'll
cover up these beds . . sheets speak. Some of the
sunlight from across the way will filter in. Sun
lies sometimes. These true shadows for seeing
where I am will go. Fanny could not smile.

"You're still half asleep/' said Clara. "Want
to sleep some more? Lucy could get you break-
fast later on."

"No. I'm awake. You bring in the little table.
Let's breakfast together."

"In here?" Clara's smile softened the shadows
in her face.

"Yes. Eight here. Do!" . . .

She felt she must face this room, this heavy
stifled room, this weighty fact of where she was
and with what. She must eat this room with her
breakfast. . .

It was hard to swallow. Her throat was dry
and was full. Above her the chandelier came
down in a tawdry twist of gilt from the dim ceil-
ing. The gilt flaked, and she saw black iron.

"Does it taste good?" asked Clara.

She looked at Clara. — God, how dare I pity
her! You are good. What you have, you have
given me. . . . "Yes, Dear, it tastes good. You
made it. It tastes of your hands."

They ate . . the breakfast, the room.

"Give me your hand!" Fanny clasped it across
the table. A bit of toast it held fell in the sudden
sally and the butter smeared the palm. Fanny

174

opened the palm, she held it full against her
mouth. She kissed the grease and the flesh.
"I am eating you," she spoke.
Clara's eyes were frightened. So she laughed.
"You dear! . . Could you eat some mor§
toast?"

— How do I know what I eat?

God, you insult us.

If we must feed on dirt

Why give us love of the Clean?

Why give us fear of the dirt

If we must feed on dirt?

Since we must /eat and eat

Why give us knowledge? . . >

What do I eat!

If I must feed on You

God, why do I forget?

175

THE whole day alone, she promised to her-
self. Lucy in the other rooms would in-
tervene a little : nothing was perfect. Yet
Fanny felt that this was good. She was at ease
in her armchair. Soon the sun would sweep into
her place. And Lucy had the musical quiet of
her folk, she really did not interfere more than
a cat might . . a useful cat who would bring her
her lunch on the portable table and her drops
every three hours. Lucy had a soothing grain,
almost like sunlight . . a sort of saffron prac-
ticable sunlight.

"Ev 'thing a 'right now, Mis' Fanny?"

"Yes, Lucy. Thank you."

The girl swayed on her little haunches, holding
her hands across her breast.

"It's gone to be a fine day. That'll mak' you
fine, Mis' Fanny, right soon again."

"I wish I was as fine as you."

"Aw Mis' Fanny!" Her hands beat out in pro-
test . . glad gaunt hands stripped by their work
of flesh, and yet the music of them lived in their
bone and their gesture. Lucy went off, her soft
shoes patting like the cushioned feet of a tamed
panther.

The door closed to the kitchen; Fanny was
alone. Lucy would seek her den and fill it with
steam and suds, wrap a red rag around her head
and fall to work with an occasional cry like a wild

176

beast musing: lost in a sort of virginal ecstacy
which Fanny loved, of work and dreaming.

— She's diligent! If she were German, wouldn't
I say: No one but a German could be so thorough?
And she's a negress. White blood yes . . but
it dilutes, that's all, the mellow flow of her life.
0 you superior Lucy! Yet she's colored.

Fanny thought of the ugly prejudices which
still lay rooted in her mind. She could praise
Lucy if she patronized her too. Take away the
condescension and at once she looked into a pool,
misted by childhood fears and girlish passion, of
black distrust.

— No use thinking of all that. I believe I had a
mind : it might have amounted to something, too.
A woman's mind at work . . as a woman's mind
. . . not as a lawyer's or a doctor's . . like some
men's minds: what'd the world have said to that?
Well, it's too late. My mind is a wreck also. It
keeps on going, like an engine, broken and off its
track, ploughing the earth and itself. Going . .
and going. Who knows though? Perhaps it is
not off its track. Perhaps my way is not a two-
rail track over a flat plain land. There are other
dimensions.

—0 I must have faith! That is the terrible
thing . . how in my weakness my faith went also.
Faith and strength seem to go together. That's
a good sign, is it not? Proves faith is not born
of weakness. My faith takes power. It's hard
work. Come back!

— There is nothing else. It is inevitable. Like
a tree that grows. And has its seasons. What

177

does it know about them? 'Now I burst into
blossoms . . . now I am in leaves . . now I am
stark and cold.' I am ashamed. Weak failure!
Rescued by Clara, living on Clara, in a flat some
man gave Clara. Shame ! . . . Well, it is Winter.
Didn't Leon know that it all meant something?
. . Did he foresee a thing like this? What would
he say? . . Harry was wrong. O I am sure of
that. I am the answer to Harry. What did he
know of Scripture . . of Jesus? We have taken
Christ and his name. What have we done with
him? What more than the Jews who refused
him? Are they Christ, themselves? . . Why do I
think so tenderly of Jews?

— Leon? One man . . If Edith were his, not
Harry's, would she love me? You are nine years
old, my beloved. I can see you. I can see you so
clear because I see you naked. What clothes have
you on today, going to school? . . Mrs. Parker's
School. That wouldn 't change. Motherless child,
you have a mother. Can't you feel . . 0 you must
feel your mother ! . .

— Suppose she could see her mother! No . .
not with your young eyes. How could they under-
stand? Fanny shrank in her chair. . . — Thank
God, I am hidden away. . . But my name? Let
it stand. Some day perhaps, since she is my own,
she may have eyes that can see me. . .

— No. Never! That is all past.

She knew that this was past. She knew there
was in her still living, that which could not bear
that it was : a part of her that held the memory

178

and hope of her child close to her breast, sucking
yet giving her warmth.

— My little girl! As you grow, you become
smaller beside me. For I grow so much faster.
My little girl! Will you catch up with your
mother?

The mother saw her naked. She was willowy
supple, tender like a flower. Her flesh was cream
and crisp, it was like the meat of a fresh peach.

The mother saw her .clothed. She stands in a
blue gingham frock, almost hidden away by a
blue and white checked apron. But the black
stockings were there and the tight sleeves and the
loved white neck. A dark braid fell across her
shoulder, tied with a stiff blue bow. — Her hair
is not dark! Mine . . mine is black. Smile at
me. Where is her face?

Fanny was troubled: she saw her child again.
She wore an apple green mulle dress very clear
and clean as it hung straight from her shoulders.
The loved white neck ! pulsant with breath of her
child. She curtsies. There was a flounce at the
hem: and at the end of the puffed sleeves was a
ruffle. Edith's bare arms ! She wore white stock-
ings, little canvas pumps. • — She is thin! ^-And
her hair? and her face?

Fanny shut her eyes and her hands waved with
pain before them. She knew these dresses were
her own! She saw her child in her own girlish
frocks . . And her hair? It was golden . . but it
would get dark. — As dark as mine?

— Does she have my frocks and my hair?
Through Fanny's mind passed dresses she had

179

worn: for romping and for dancing, for lessons
and for parties. — I have forgotten not a single
one. Are Edith's really the same?

She was moved. She moved against her emo-
tion. ! — I do not see her ! Your dresses — not her
face! Has she the same frocks? Fanny knew
this could not be. ... She knew there still lived
within her that which needed to play with the
sweet fancy that it was.

"But no," she murmured. "In no way be like
me ! Edith . . to save you from that . . come, look
at your Mother!"

With her daughter's eyes, Fanny beheld her-
self. — I am not hateful. She was a little
woman, breaking and bewildered with flood of a
world within her heart. She was a little woman
tortured in the uses of a Hand that would not
leave her alone.

— But I don't see an end . •; There is no end. I
do not see a growth . . There is no growing. . .
Let me rest here quiet. I am still weak. Too
weak to assemble my thoughts. What if the room
is Clara's . . Clara's lover's (is there at least love
here?) What do these things mean, beside the
truth that I am quiet?

The sun sent a sudden shaft under the cornice
of the opposite house. It lay in a cold glare,
gradually milding, on her.

So Fanny gave up thinking. — Why am I so
hungry, having done nothing?

Lucy cleared the table . . . folded it.

"0 it was good, child!"

"Thank you, Mis' Fanny."

180

"No, Lucy: leave the table. Bring me the
cards."

"Yes, Mis7 Fanny."

Fanny played Canfield. And even this was be-
yond her. She was amazed to find that she had
placed a red Jack under a red Queen: over there
was a black Three under a Five ! "I am skipping
chances and making horrible mistakes."

She shook her head. "How dull I am!" She
was helpless against it. — Stupider than Lucy.
Duller than the stupidest person in the world. She
smiled. She knew that the reason was that she
was filling with a Light.

— When I was pregnant with Edith, sometimes
I was like this.

She fell back in her chair, and shut her eyes.
— What is it this time? She slept. . .

The bell awoke her. Her nerves jangled bright
and disparate like the three tones of the electric
bell. Lucy appeared.

"Why Mis' Fanny . .it's some frien's o' Miss
Clara—"

Fanny's words were srvift action. "Did you
send them away?"

"No 'm, I didn't yet. Ah — Ah tole 'em ter wait.
Should Ah—?"

"Let them come in. Tell them Miss Clara's
friend is here and will be glad to receive them. ' '

Lucy stood suspended in the unheard-of formal
words of this lady whose value she sensed. By her
face, she understood. She went out.

Fanny's awareness was sheer above the drowse

181

of her chair. Her eyes commanded her face : they
were suddenly young.

The door opened. Two women . . Lucy shut
them in, and they were three together.

One was a girl, short in he? coat of black
velours, all black except the gleaming face under
black eyes, black toque : all round and yet her eyes
watched Fanny sharply. Hostilely. Beside her a
tall lank woman, very blonde, rose like the em-
bodiment of the strange stroke in the round girl's
eyes.

They stood, Fanny got up.

"You must come in. Clara's away for the day.
But IVe been so eager to meet Clara's friends."

The taller one nodded.

— What does she recognize, that she nods, in
my words?

"My name is Sennister — Susan Sennister. This
is Miss Liebovitz."

Fanny took a hand, white in its feel beneath
the long glove, and took a hand small like a child's,
warm and ruddy: gloveless.

"Do sit down."

Miss Sennister looked at her companion.
"Guess we got time, Tessie?"

"Sure we have," she smiled. "We really came
to have a glimpse of you." Her smile was rounder.

"I'm glad," said Fanny. She looked at Susan
Sennister, to make her also smile. It would help

182

matters. Miss Sennister smiled. But the smile
did not help. It hurt.

"I have been sick . . Probably you know. And
Clara's been an angel."

"She is an angel," said the tall woman, as if
Fanny had not meant it.

"0 . . she's a good thing," said Tessie Liebo-
vitz. Her black eyes lay on Fanny's. — There is
no misunderstanding! They were soft. "We
love Clara," she said. "We say yes . . just auto-
matically . . to Clara's friends."

"Thank you," Fanny looked sternly at Susan
Sennister. "That's a beginning at least." She
wanted to smile. This woman was so very stiff.
She must be very stern. — How can I tell? What
are they? . . She went on: "I say Yes to the
friends of Clara — but with all my heart. ' '

"Have you been here long?" asked Tessie.

"Very long!"

"We heard her speak of you, before she brought
you here," said Susan. Then she settled back in
her chair. Something within her was released.
She pulled off her gloves. Her shoulders slack-
ened. "That don't prove anything, of course."
Her smile was different . . sweeter in its hurt.
"Clara's like all of us. We are good pals. We
have a lot of secrets . . trade secrets we chew
over. That gives us an air of being close. But a
real confidence . .? Not us!"

"01 don't know," said Tessie.

"That's just it— you don't."

There was a pause. Fanny was in the sun . . .
feeling herself within it strangely, unfairly

183

warmed against these two. She wanted to warm

them.

"Won't one of you take this chair? The sun's

so good."

" We've had more of it than you," said Susan
Sennister. ' l Stay where you are. ' '

There was another pause filled now with three
smiles that were unstrained.

Fanny's head was light. — My! I am weak.
There was a dim strip weighing above her eyes,
on her brow. Beyond, in back of her head, she
was light. So that her head seemed tilted toward
her eyes. She saw these women. — I can be com-
fortable with them ! They are strong : they could
comfort her. Tessie Liebovitz chatted. Her own
lips moved. She said nothing. But they were
moist. . . .

Then she saw: Long black earth. A man was
standing still. He had gnarled hands, all else
of him was young. He had clear-grey eyes, he
had bronzed hair and beard. His cheeks were
hardened by hot winds, but his lips that were free
of the beard were soft and red against the show-
ing of white skin.

She saw him clear upon the long black earth.
— He is Jesusl

Many people passed him. She did not see them.
But she saw the eyes and hands of Jesus go
forth quietly to each . . They passed. The eyes
and the hands of Jesus came back to themselves.
The earth was harder and harder. The earth
passed by him. Villages and cities passed. Altars
were shut against his hands. Priests were shut

184

against his eyes. The houses of the great passe'd
him shut. And the earth grew blacker. . . .

The earth was very black. A tree, blasted by
lightning, thrust its ruin against a purple sky. The
earth was very black. And Christ stood on it
underneath the sky, and far from the solitary tree
that twisted leafless over the horizon. Christ
raised his arms, but his eyes looked down upon
the barren earth. He was changed. He was twisted
like the tree. He was shaped like the tree. Like
it he was broken and bent from stanchioning
purple sky above a barren earth. But he was
white. And his beard was red. He had no hands,
he had lost his hands even as the tree its leaves.
His feet were buried underneath the ground.

A woman was before him. In a scarlet robe,
against her breast, she held a boy.

"Lord," she said, "this is my child. He drives
me each day into the Marketplace with paint on
my lips."

"Why do you call me 'Lord'?"

"Are you not Lord of us all?"

The black earth bloomed. Jesus was gay, he
was a clear young man. With his two hands he
touched the shrouded hair of the woman and it
streamed like chrysoprase.

"Your child has blessed you," he said.

She parted her robe, it was green also : it fell
away and she was naked before Jesus. Her belly
was silken smooth, her breasts thrust up like buds
in a new Spring: she had born.no child and she
had known no man. Before Christ her body was
sweet like a lily at dawn.

185

Fanny pressed her brow with her two hands,
and saw the quiet women. They had stopped
talking. They looked at her deep, and their voices
had lagged away.

"0 . . you will have tea!"

" Thank you, No. I'm afraid — we tire you.
We'd better go. You're not too strong yet."
Susan Sennister got up.

Fanny was warm in their understanding, and
was ashamed. "0 don't go ! You make me feel —
I'm a bad substitute for Clara. Please!"

Susan sat stiffly, then she relaxed.

"You know," she said, "it seems to me I've
seen you before."

"And I've seen you!"

"When was that?"

"0 ages," said Fanny. — Am I mad? "Before
we were born? And you too, Tessie Liebovitz.
You were singing."

"No," said the girl, serious. "I was playing
the violin."

"Your fingers were singing, then."

"They were too small," said Tessie.

"Too small to sing?"

"Too small to sing . . too small to sing," the
girl whispered rapt. " So I work — my body, see?
It works for my fingers that were too small to
play."

"What was I doing?" Susan leaned forward.

"Your hands are frightful. One of them clasp-
ing, clutching . . one of them thrusting away."
Fanny's hands were before her in a frantic dumb-
play.

186

Susan laughed. "How right you are!"

"I am a fool/' cried Fanny. — Am I mad? I
do not seem to mind. They seem to understand —
something. Am I a fool?

"She is wonderful, " said Tessie.

" Clara told us— "

"What?"

Susan got up. She held Fanny's face gently in
her hands. She kissed her brow. " — that we
would love you. ' '

Lucy came in with tea.

"Clara saved my life."

"She's a good thing," said Tessie. . . .

They drank their tea in silence. No hand
trembled.

Susan and Tessie got up.

"You must not get up!"

They came close to Fanny. Her eyes were al-
most parallel with Tessie 's red mouth which had
spoken. She looked up at the straight lips of
(Susan. On Susan's neck she saw a birthmark,
black like a footprint. Against it, all she was
white.

"We're going to come again — "
"When you're better — "

"I am better," Fanny smiled.

Tessie said: "You are a woman."

Clara was there, and she still vibrant from it
all.

"You had visitors," Fanny said. "Miss Sen-
nister and Miss Liebovitz."

187

Clara studied the face of her friend. — What
have they left upon her! within her! She saw
the face of Fanny glow : it was aquiver and alive,
her face, as not for a long time.

"I gave them tea. That was right, was it not!
The little girl's a dear."

"Yes."

"When she left, she threw her arms around me
and kissed me."

"You had a good time together!"

"Yes. And you, Dear! Your sister!"

"She is worse. But she won't die. Not that
sort of thing. Just pine away and eat up her hus-
band's money and nag her children."

"There's nothing to do, I suppose!"

* i Of course not. You liked Tessie ! Not Susan. ' '

"I did not understand her!"

"Do you think you understood Tessie!" Clara
was eager. She did not challenge. She wished to
be assured.

"I think so. ... All except those hands — "

"Hands!"

"That is: that is what I understood the best:
they're the key, so little and so terrible. You see,
I know that. Only, I haven't used the key."

She smiled in the amazed eyes of Clara.

"Fanny, you sometimes frighten me." Clara
took her hand and held it long and looked at it.
Then she squeezed it and smiled also.

"You don't mean to say: this very first time
she told you her story!"

"No. Why did you think so, Clara?"

"What you said about her hands."

188

"Who couldn't see that! They are so small
and tortured — plump perverse hands. She had
no gloves. Her hands, Clara — her hands have — "

Fanny stopped. She could not go on.

"Yes?"

"Well," she whispered half to herself, ". .
something ruins all of us, I suppose."

She was blanched as if she had walked leisur-
edly upon a strange outlandish road, forgetful it
was so: and sudden there was a precipice below
her feet. Mind held back her almost plunging
body with the plunge's horror. She recoiled.

"I know what you were going to say," Clara's
voice was hard, "her hands it was, that ruined
her. . . ."

"Clara!"

"We are ruined, for you. I know it. You are
right. We are bad women . . ruined. ..."

"Clara!"

Fanny jumped up. She faced her friend. She
sought her eyes, sad and rebellious, and held them.

"Clara, you have saved me, you are sound. It
is I who am broken. When one is broken, Clara,
one does not always quickly understand. One
lacks words. One falls back, Clara, on words that
for today are lies."

She clasped the wrists of her friend. They
stood tense, against each other: so. In a taut
silence.

"We are all ruined," came Clara's voice. "But
you still love."

"Then none of us are ruined."

189

Clara 's head tossed in anger. "No senti-
ment I"

"There are no ruins I tell you" Fanny met her.

Fanny lay quiet in bed. She was relaxed at
last. The vibrance of these many hours had run
out into a Space beyond her, where the sharp
thrusts through her nerves lay lost in a pool of
glow.

She lay in this glow in bed: Clara beside her,
responsive to her friend's new peace but unaware
of its synthesis of warring parts meeting beyond
her.

"Should I read?" she asked.

"Tell me about your friends."

"They are friends of mine." Clara raised her
head as if her words were a challenge. Fanny lay
still, with her eyes shut, waiting.

"There's Tess. Poor Dear," at last. . . .
"Her story's not hard to tell. That's why I was
wondering how you knew. Didn't she hint? Well,
I don't wonder after all, Dear. You are so won-
derful. 0 I am glad to have you here. I want to
keep you forever. If only I could . . . Well:
Tessie was born in solne mudhole South — Caro-
lina, I think. Her Pa kept a general store . . does
still I suppose. He's a Jew, you know. Tess says
he never was no good as a business man. But a
dear! He'd sit in his room back of the store,
holding some old Bible in his hand . . or a prayer-
book . . and sing it out, half-aloud, with his head

190

and his shoulders swayin', keepin' time. Tessie
says that is what Music meant to her. ... When
the poor old man learned she was musical, Tess
says, he fell on his knees. I can just see him, his
thin old knees half worn through the black pants,
creaking and cracking on the dirty floor. And he
thanked the Lord who, if he had taken away his
wife, had given him a daughter who loved music.
There were other children, but they simply didn't
count. He didn't have more than enough to keep
'em all in food, but Tess got a violin. And soon
the Dame that taught violin, piano, French and
artistic sewing in the Town told the old man
Tessie knew more than she did about music. She
was a wonder, she said. She ought to study in a
big City and go in for concerts.

"Well . . the old man got down on his shakey
knees again: and this time he didn't pray: he
swore he'd get the cash to send Tess to Richmond
or New York, if he had to starve for it ... even
if he had to sell — 0 I forgot. The old man had
one proud possession. He was a poor old ignor-
ant man, but one of his ancestors had been Wise
and a Eabbi. He kept a mouldy store and kept it
badly: but this Thing he still had from the wise
old Eabbi . . and it shone in their home like the
sun. Tessie gives it a name I can't remember . .
but I can see it. A sort of breast-plate it was . .
a breast-plate of some holy Priest of their relig-
ion: square and in gold. And set in it, in four
rows of three each, were oblong gems. Each was
different — camelian and ruby and lapis and topaz
and jasper and amethyst and agate: I don't re-

191

member them all. On each was carved a holy
word in ancient Hebrew. Well, there was the
mouldy store and this thing of glory shinin' in it.
But there was the daughter who could make
Music. So she could make it right, the old man
sold his treasure. He was religious. Keeping
that Relic was part of his religion . . but giving
it up was also part of his religion. Tessie got a
first class violin . . they cost like fury, you know.
And then everything went well. I don't know the
particulars. Some big guy from New York who
was down in Charleston gave her a hearing and
next year Tess bought a new dress and a bag and
took the train to New York. Her Dad had even
mortgaged the store. But there was Tess gettin'
ready to earn thousands in New York . . while
the rest of the Liebovitz clan in mudhole, South
Carolina, lived on water and hope. ' '

Fanny lay still, with her eyes shut. In the pause :

"Then it happened," she murmured.

"Yes,"
— As always.
Lord, why is it always?
Why do you break the soil
In which you plant the seed?

" — the old master, Tessie says she loved him,
waved his hands and pulled his beard. * You have
talent, Fraulein. 0 you have genius. You are
music ! But those hands. What are we going to
do about that hand?' They were too small, Fan.
You saw 'em. They were too small. You got
to do all sorts of stunts on a fiddle before you
go in for concerts. And her fingers simply were

192

too short. Not too short for playin' in an orches-
tra or somethin' . . but for a concert, where you
stand up all by yourself. . . . Well, Tessie hadn't
come to New York and put the Liebovitz clan on
bread and water and made the old man sell part
of his religion for another part, just to play
fiddle in a restaurant. She went to a doctor or
something of the sort who told her he could
stretch her fingers. He stretched 'em alright — "

Fanny raised herself on her arms from the pil-
low, her eyes still shut.

" — till something tore."

i ' Till something broke. ' '

"It was all over."

"I know the rest," said Fanny. She sank back
in her pillow. Both of them were quiet. . . .

Each was conscious of the other's breathing.
The room was heavy.

Clara stirred. "Shall I open a window?" she
asked.

"What about the other?" Fanny held her.

"01 can't say much about Sennister. I have
known her for a long time . . nearly four years
I think. She just is: she has no tale of woe."

"You are good friends?"

"Yes. I have learned a lot from Susan. She is
wise. She has a brain, I'll tell you. She thinks
a lot . . and reads."

"What does she read?"

"0 books you've never heard of. But I don't
think she gets her ideas from them. They're hers,
you bet."

193

"Tessie, I guess, has learned a lot from her
also/'

" She's our Sunday school teacher," Clara
smiled.

"I see."

"She has a religion. She believes — shall I tell
you what she says?"

"Why not?"

"She says: 'I believe in the power of Hate,
I believe in the truth of Sin.
I believe in the failure of Truth. ' ' '

Fanny was silent.

"One day she made us learn all that by heart.
Don't take it too serious, Fan dear. She'd had a
drop too much. She was jolly. So were we all
. . . It's a joke, of course. ..."

"Clara, you know it's no joke. You know it's
a religion."

"I suppose so. It don't fit in very well, though,
does it? with the religion of the Bible."

"There are so many religions of the Bible. Per-
haps it fits in right well."

Clara's nervous laugh: "You and Susan '11 get
on well together. You are both philosophers. But
you're both good — though you're better, Dear,
and deeper. I know that. Susan talks awful bad.
But you know, Dear, what she says has something
to do with Christianity. Sort of twisted like. But
it has. You wait and see. When you know her.
Susan . . she's like a saint. . . "

— Christ, you must loose your buried feet and
your arms without hands!

194

Christ, you must not be twisted like that

tree!

Christ, you must not be rooted like a tree !
Walk the earth, brother.

Fanny's eyes shut once more. She saw the
white neck of Susan Sennister : on its side the lit-
tle birthmark like the print of a black foot . .
clear because her neck was white. She heard her
voice: the resonant low voice of one who speaks
often with herself. She saw the black eyes of
Tessie upon her : the full lips, redder than rouge,
the crowded high-pressed brow, the child-
hands. . . .

Clara sat still. — She will go to sleep now.

195

FIEE in Clara's eyes. The desperate em-
brace together of her life and of her love
for Fanny rose lucent in them. She said:

"Well, if you want to meet my friends, you
shall meet them. I'll give a party to celebrate
your being here, and your getting well — and the
hope that you'll stay on."

"That'll be fun!"

"Then there'll be more than just me to do the
hoping. ' '

"You're a dear."

Fanny saw a party of eighteen years ago. She
met Harry there. They walked the verandah . .
walked back and forth three dances.

The espagnols are open. The music flutters
through into the purple night like cherry-colored
ribbons.

"Let's go on the lawn," he said. "Let's dance
on the lawn."

"We can dance here."

"No. Let's dance on the lawn."

"Then we won't dance."

But at last she yielded. He clasped her waist.
He sprang with her through the elastic night. The
grass was moving crystal sea under their silent
feet.

Her breath bounded against his. "You see?"
he panted. "You must always do as I say." . .
And even then, even then she sensed in his words

196

what she willed, not he. — Was it so later? His
going down, the agony . . what she willed?

"0 I'm so anxious to know whom all I'm going
to meet."

Clara shook her head. ' ' Such folk as you have
never met."

"I hope so! I want to meet new sorts. I want
to find a new world. I am sure it will be better.
It's yours, Dear."

"They're all I have."

"Don't you dare apologize! Don't you dare
spoil it, I feel as if I could be happy again.
Whomever it's with — I'll be happy with them."

"They're a strange lot," Clara laughed.

"Who?"

"Well, there's a Judge: there's a Gambler:
there's an Officer of Police: there's a queer guy
who ought to be a poet "

"0 how exciting! Do the Policeman and the
Gambler get on?"

' * They 're side-kicks ' '

"Side-kicks?"

"Partners."

"My! what a lot I'm going to learn," she mur-
mured.

"That's what brought Tessie and Susan to-
gether. Her man's a police Lef tenant. Tessie 's
is Abraham Mangel "

"And Clara, yours "

"That's a secret, Dear. You call him Mr.
Mark ..01 can tell you. Tellin' you a secret's
like burying it. Don't you let on. He's really a
Judge, Dear. Eight in New York ! Think of that.

197

He's so good. . . Shall I tell you his right name?
Sure never to let on? Judge Mark Pfennig. "

" Judge . . Mark . . Pfennig, " she repeated
slowly.

"He's a Jew," Clara said groping. She won
courage from the soft distance in Fanny's eyes,
inquiring, pondering. "Like most of 'em. They're
the best, Fan. Eeally."

"Why are they the best?"

"They're the wisest . . and the gentlest.
They're hardest and softest. Wait till you see
Abe Mangel with Tess. He treats her like a
father. Like a sentimental father. Those old puffy
eyes of his with little ridges of flesh beneath 'em
— just like her Dad in Carolina, I bet. Only
wise."

"You say he's a gambler?"

"Well, not really. Never plays. Not he! He
owns a big joint, that's all."

"And . . Susan's "

"Silly! Gambling's against the Law. You
know that, don't you? Well, what does that
mean? Any respectable Gambler who wants to
make a 'go' must have a side partner on the
Force."

«0— I gee."

"You'll see, all right. But you don't now.
You're shocked. When one's shocked one don't
see. I found that out. Bern' shocked is the same
as bein' blind. . . . Fanny: do you really want
to meet them?"

Fanny pondered: her head low, her eyes fallen
upon her lacing and unlacing fingers. Tessie and

198

Susan and Clara . . — She has saved me . . for
what! . . were in her pondering eyes. She saw
Clara always. — What do I see of Clara? what
know? And what of Tessie, Susan? She saw them
often, they came often now. They sat there, quiet,
proper, eyes veiled. . . Hurt eyes. Fanny
thought of Stride the Kentucky colt whom she
had gentled when she was a girl. They were good
friends. Stride knew her, knew that she would
not hurt her, knew that she cared for her wisely.
Stride knew, standing there aquiver while she
came toward her bringing a handful of oats, that
oats were good. Yet beneath the knowing in
Stride's eyes at times a deeper world looked out
on Fanny : a world of strangeness, of the expect-
ancy of harm. So now. . . . — They love me. That
first time1 showed. Even Susan in her secret way.
Yet they are so still ! so far ! I do not touch them.

Never had she touched Stride. Never. Now?

Sudden the thought came : — There is a part of
them, a whole dimension I can not see! She
wanted to see it. . . — Their men?

— Sisters! why do I call you so? I want to
touch you. That I may know perhaps why we are
sisters ?

Fanny's hands went up, and her head. Brightly:
"Yes! Give the party. Do! Ask everyone. . ."

There was something Clara, standing there,
wondering for her answer, understood. She took
Fanny's hands and clasped them close in her own.
She kissed them.

199

SIX

PAVEMENT BROKEN

AT LAST the bell rang the door opened,
Clara 's man came in. Clara got up and
they shook hands. Fanny was aware in the
long strain of waiting that her power to feel was
gone. — I shall understand nothing.

"This is my friend, Mark. Fanny, Mr. Mark."

He was long and moist and breathless. He laid
on the sofa carefully a bundle of bottles of wine.
His broad black frock coat was worn to a gloss.
His skin seemed also, though his hands were
white, dark and glossed like his coat. His coat
was a uniform and so was his skin. He was be-
hind them.

— I shall understand nothing!

Mr. Mark sat down, his legs were short and his
knees pointed beneath the mound of his belly.
They chatted . . all three . . she too.

"Well, dear," his breath was short and thick,
"expecting the crowd?"

"0 no. Just Tessie and Susan, and Abe Man-
gel and Jim of course. My friend wants to meet
my friends."

Fanny began to see him under the cloud of him-
self : . . the grey sharp face, larded in fat, the
shiny eyes set deep, the lips rounded and red and
soft-thrust forward from a chin too long and grey-
blue with its undertone of beard. His nose
twitched, conspicuous, large-pored, under a brow
that was smooth and white like a card,

203

"It's good of you, Madame. We're not such a
bad lot."

"0 . . I could know that," Fanny laughed,
"from just knowing Clara."

"That good we're not . . not as good as Clara.
But we do our best."

Clara laughed. He sighed, and his little eyes,
hard like the shoe-button eyes of a rag doll, rolled
up.

In this opening of mood, Fanny looked at the
room . . hard gas-jets, brash lambrequins, plush
. . Boom she had lived in . . the floor was blood-
red beneath a shrill blue carpet. Details . . de-
tails. It meant nothing. It formed no word.

The door opened again, again. Susan Sennis-
ter stood there bleak and tense like a caustic re-
frain to the long heavy man at her side : he was
spiritually galvanized, he moved for all his power
as if he were lined with metal . . Lieutenant
Statt. Tessie ensconced in a big chair with her
feet trilling, mocked him. A man, soft, short,
slow, with unctious hands and voice, watched her
effrontery with eyes afraid in his heavy mournful
face. — That is Abe Mangel.

— But I have learned something in all these
years! She stopped the rush of her amazement.
— Be still. Just wait.

They were not bothered by her. Their knowing
each other wove a glutinous web through the
room, and she held in it: her stirring could not
have torn it, she was tight. It was a gross warm
knowing: no subtle brain-fabric . . bowel-strong
and sure. Fanny felt her shoulders pressed to-

204

gether, her head high and sheer, in this viscous
tissue of their being together.

Mr. Mark cleared a lamp and a pile of maga-
zines from the table. Lucy came in, brought
glasses which she placed. Mr. Mark with cere-
monial noise uncorked three bottles of red wine
and stood them beside the glasses. The talk was
slow and thick: the wine diluting it, freeing it,
making it run faster. . . .

"You don't drink?" Mr. Mark stood over
Fanny. She smiled up, full of the incongruous
sense of smiling not at a man but at some official
structure. . .

"I'm afraid — my Doctor "

"Mrs. Luve is not quite well yet, you know,
Mark," said Clara.

All eyes turned upon Fanny: Mr. Mark's wil-
fully considerate, Tessie's hurt and afraid blaz-
ing a partnership she had no mind of, Susan's in
a twinging message that was somehow sweet,
Mangel's soft because they were always soft.

Fanny felt the hard stare of Statt . . empty
like a stone.

"0 well — do give me a glass. "

She sipped.

"It's good stuff," said Tessie.

Susan, warmed, looked at Jim Statt and her
warmth turned on him.

"Of course, that stiff's too good to touch
liquor! And he's as healthy as a brickbat. All
his virtue allows is pullin' joints!"

Statt shrugged his shoulders. Then he smiled
broadly, as if suddenly aware that Susan had flat-

205

tered him. Mangel, holding his glass aloft,
smacked his lips. . . . The eyes were gone from
Fanny. They did not come back.

She drank her wine. She was relieved and
brightened. She thought of a field : it expands as
the cloud barring the sun sails by. . . The eyes
were gone.

She thought of her own place with these strange
thick people. Who were they? — a Judge, a Po-
lice Lieutenant, a Gambling-house proprietor,
three prostitutes, herself! She did not know who
they were.

Mr. Mark argued with pointing forefinger:

"Of course we do good! Would the people feel
secure if we didn't have courts and judges I"

"You do no good. None of us knows how to do
good, I tell you," said Abe Mangel. "We are all
in the Dark. I can argue as good as you. Couldn't
I say: I am a public benefactor? What do I live
on? The luxury and the vice of the weak and the
damn-fools. That's what I trim. That's what I
get rid of. Ain't it better to live on that than on
the hard workers and the good folk? now I ask
you ! 0 bosh ! I don't make no such delusions for
myself. We don't know — none of us — how to do
good."

Statt sat stiffly in his chair. He listened, but
as one might listen to the wind. . . . The philo-
sophic argument wore down. Mangel and Mark
were unable to support it. They drank wine and
turned to their women. . . .

Tessie sat on Abe Mangel's lap: sideways and

206

still with her feet tossing. He caressed her neck
with a soft and meaty hand.

"Well, dearie — well, dearie, are you happier?"
he crooned.

Susan and Jim Statt were close together on the
sofa, looking before them, saying no word to each
other. And the large Mr. Mark, his manners like
his sumptuous prim coat, chatted with Clara, and
Fanny, listening, added an easy word.

At a late hour they got up said good-by, and
were gone.

Fanny saw them again and again. She had lit-
tle talks with each of them, alone. She found she
was fond of them all.

"It's good to come here, Clara," Statt stalked
in. "I told Susan to come, too. . . . Here,
Broaddus, up here." The door stayed open. A
young big patrolman in uniform (Statt wore plain
clothes always) mounted the stair, puffing. He
deposited a case in the hall.

"Champagne . . and good," said Statt.

The patrolman, red faced, soft with blue eyes
somewhat dimmed, went down.

"Brought them for you," Statt turned to
Fanny . . "set you up. . . . From Diggens. "

"Diggens!" Clara exclaimed. "YouVe pulled
Diggens!"

"Yes ..."

"What did she do?" asked Fanny.

"Slow on payment. See? And always tryin'
to bargain for a lower price. Yesterday I get

207

mad. Sort of lost my temper. Perhaps I was
wrong. Old Dig was a right sort of bitch. Well
—too late now. She's pinched. Here's good wine,
at least. ' '

He kicked the case with heavy boots. He was
big and sure. Fanny and Clara stood beneath his
imperturbable mass.

— How can I thank him? He's a brute. He's a
monster! Fanny spoke to him:

4 ' Don't kick that case, Lieutenant Jim."

' ' Why f Afraid I '11 break the bottles ? ' '

"No. . . Afraid they'll break you."

"Break me!"

"Hm . . hm, Lieutenant Jim. You're so brit-
tle. —0 ever so much brittler than bottles."

He looked at her in a pause that ended with a
chuckle.

"0 you don't say!" The skin of his face was
rough: his features were too big. He seemed
carved — crudely — by a dull-souled sculptor.

"You're a brittle child," said Fanny. — Why
do I speak so?

"And you!"

"I'm a child too. You and I are the children
here. Yes we are! We two must look out!"

"Not Mark? . . not Clara? . . not Mangel?"

"0 Mangel is old! and so is Tessie! and so is
Clara. You are a stupid, stubborn child, I tell
you. Look out. Me too. We mustn't hurt each
other. . . And you'd better stop breaking the
Law."

"My dear sister child, you don't seem to under-
stand. I don't break the Law."

208

Fanny wavered. — Why do I speak so?

"Don't you know, you come from the South,
don't you? . . that gambling and prostitution are
illegal in New York? I am an Officer of the New
York Police. I am the head of what is known in
the papers as the Strong Arm Squad. I raid
Houses of gambling and prostitution."

"All "

"Those that don't do their duty."

"How can an illegal house do its duty?"

"By supporting the Police, of course — the 'way
we must be supported. I have needs "

Statt's face was serious and serene. He

stretched out a long leg. . . "Needs " and

kicked the case of wine. "You don't savvy much,
little stupid woman from Dixie."

She watched him close.

"Aren't you afraid, Jim Statt?"

He drew in his leg and crossed it over the other.

"I'm an Officer of Police. I'm a Roman Cath-
olic. What have I got to fear?" . . .

Tessie came in, tossing off her hat. Tessie
hated hats and gloves.

"—-Hasn't Abe been here? O hello Statt."

"He's nursing a hurt," he answered her. "I've
raised his price."

The little girl glowered over the big man.

"You look out," she muttered. "Don't hurt
Abe Mangel too much."

"No? . . why not?" sneered Jim Statt.

"He'll turn good "

Fanny took a magazine and went into the cor-
ner of the room beside the curtains. She tried to

209

read. She did not see the page. What did this
mean? He'll turn good! Was that what Jews
did when they were hurt too much? Was that
when they saw God! . . — Harry and I blinded
by a blow that you see God by? Fanny sat brood-
ing over the blank page of her book . . brooding
of the Bible, brooding over the words of Jesus
Christ: hearing the sneers of Statt, the swift
shrill scold of Tessie, the warm weary murmur of
Clara.

— 0 it is good I am here !

Learning . . learning. . . .

She saw no thing. She understood no thing.
But she was at ease as an infant, also perhaps
not knowing, who sucks and who swallows. — Why
is Statt also a child?

Abe Mangel was there. He bowed to the group
near the door and came beside Fanny. She held
out both her hands and smiled at him.

"Sit down!''

Old man with the heavy face of the Jew!
— Your eyes are dark wells, your brow is dry and
rumpled like an old bit of parchment. Your nose
and your lips droop wearily, old man !

"You are tired, Mr. Mangel."

"0 it's nothing. Tessie '11 cheer me up, a lit-
tle. ..."

' * Mr. Mangel — may I ask you a question ? ' '

He looked at Fanny with compassion. — You
are young too? you too ask questions? . . "Why
of course, Fanny. Go on."

"Why do I like you, Mr. Mangel?"

"0 — that! You'll hav' to answer that your-

210

self. Such woman foolishness, liking me! how
can a man explain ?"

"You are a bad man, aren't you?"

"Very bad. I ain't no better than a crook. Only
richer. My wife dresses better." His eyes twin-
kled.

"Well, I can't help it. I like you."

He smiled at her with his weary slow-twinkling
eyes. She saw his hands . . gnarled yet fat, ugly
yet expressive.

"And I like you, Fanny Luve. What's the differ-
ence why you like me? Don't ask no foolish ques-
tions about a good thing. Take it."

"But are you glad I like you?"

"I should say so! That sort of foolishness . .
that's all that makes life liveable, I say! That
sort of foolishness — you know what it is? — it's
TrutV

"You think."

"0 no. I am too tired to think. When I was
young, I thought. I was clever. I was full of
dreams. I thought — I thought . . instead of
learning to make money. When it was too late, I
had to stop thinking of anything except how to
make money, because earlier I hadn't thought of
that at all. It don't pay to be a thinker. You end
up by being a gambler."

"All thinkers V9

"I should imagine so," said Mangel. He
brooded. Stiffly he got up. "Look here! What
sort of nonsense are you making me say? Fanny
Luve, I'm a stupid old feller. I don't know noth-
ing. Thirty years ago I was a stupid young fel-

211

ler. I'm sure. I guess I never knew how to
think."

She held up her face to him.

"I don't know how to think, either. I am stupid
too."

Abe Mangel shook his head.

"You're funny. You make me feel we don't
know how to think . . and we don't know how to
be good. . . We men and women."

He smiled with his old eyes. But his brow was
frowning. He walked away to Tessie.

FANNY :— — You are there !

The world is dark, there is no

light in the world.
The world is close, I feel you

there about me.
You stir, you crouch, you are

still.
You do not know that I am here,

knowing you.
You lift your voices, they give no

sound :
Shrieking they are still.

— Only the dark world
Holding you and me . . .
No word, no hand-touch, no sig-
nal of the eye
Binds us: only
A dark world.

212

— Yet- we are close!

Could one be closer in the Sun,

Loving in the lap of the Spring ?

Harry and I, were we so close?

Edith and I . . you in the grip
of my bowels, you in the suck
of my blood and my heavy
breasts,

Were we so close?

— A dark world holds us

Strange from each other, groping

with blank eyes,
With blank mouths . „ .
Closely.

CLARA : — — You are not well yet, you are not

ready to leave me.
What is the matter with you?
Why are you still here?

0 I am glad you are here! You
are balm, you are pressing
sharpness on my ache . .

1 do not understand.

— You are good friends with Mark,

and with Susan and Tessie.
Also they already feel how right

that you are here with us.
And Mangel feels it. Statt feels

nothing. Statt does not count.
Is it because you are not well, not

complete, that you stay?

213

Is it because we must heal you,

must complete you, that you

stay?
Then you will go? — when you

have taken from us . . what?
You give? . . You give — to me

how deeply, to us all how

deeply !
What can we give to you? How

can we heal and complete you?

— Is it our hurt that you would take

from us?

Is it our broken-ness that will
complete you?

MANGEL:— — Tessie should be my daughter.

Then the Fear of God would keep
her flesh away.

You have shown me, Luve wom-
an, that Tessie is my daughter.

— I am made of filth. If I could

stop hating myself !
I am a dirty Jew . . I hate Statt.

. . He makes me feel — this. . .

But who is he?
His body is straighter because he

has no soul.
(There are times when I would

love to kiss his body.)

214

— My soul is beautiful. My soul
says to me :

You are a dirty Jew ! . .

What is the use? One picks the
smut from one's nose,

But one's nose smells on, the
smut comes back,

What is the use of having a beau-
tiful soul!

No one tells Statt that he is a
dirty Dutchman.

«— You, little girl, with the apple
breasts and the hips hard and
sweet like an apple,

You are my soul and you are far
away.

You should be my daughter.

Then I should not have to hold
you naked. . .

She is my daughter ! 0 if I could
say that, say : Father !

Not: — a whore and a dirty Jew
that keeps her.

TESSIE : — — Music is a dancing wall

Between me and the mad man

world.

Wall danced away.
Stiff man world holds me and

pierces me.
You, Abe, at least have hands

soft-speaking.

215

— Fanny Luve . . what is the name
of your kid?

SUSAN : — — I ask myself no question.

0 horror, O torrent of horror
If I asked a question.

— The mountainside
Is steep, is snow.

1 mount, I mount.

I am erect : my shoulders and my

feet
Freeze sharp.

— 0 the horror, 0 the torrent, 0 the

flood

Down-pouring . .
If I asked a question.

MAEK: — • * — Well, what difference does it

make I

At least half my life is good.
I'm a good Judge, I'm a good

husband and father.
Who in New York can say as

much for himself?

. . . They looked on Fanny naturally, without
color of her . . seeing her within the way of their
looking on themselves: so that they came not to
ask who she was who was there.

"Well, all right then . . if you ask me: you're
right. Mangel gets my goat. I can't go him.

216

He's nothin' but a damn gambler. Why does he
put on airs?"

"I never saw him put on airs," said Fanny.

They stood. Her face, upturned to James
Statt's gray one, glowed in a strange way.

" He's so humble "

"Is that putting on airs, Jim?"

Statt stirred in discomfort.

"You're right," she went on. "It's the worst
sort of putting on airs. ' '

"There, you see? The damn little weasel! I'll
stand none of his nonsense ! ' '

"He don't give you any, Jim."

"Well, you know what I mean."

"I know that you hate him because he's just
himself."

"Jew!"

"He's cringing and a coward. But even so, he
makes us feel small, don't he, Jim?"

"Us small? Are you crazy? Us small?"

"Surely. Even when he is ever so mean and
humble, he is asserting to our souls . . to all in us
that feels and understands . . that he is one of
those high up . . who have made us feel and un-
derstand."

"Fanny, you're crazy. I'll kill the little beg-
gar!"

"You won't dispose of him that way, you silly
boy. It's not he . . ."

"God damn him."

"Jim, you have no mind and you have no heart.
You don't learn at all, Jim. Why instead of
swearing at Abe Mangel don't you see him

217

straight! God hasn't damned him. God's
damned us perhaps . . by spreading him and the
likes of him all over the world: or blessed us. I
don't know, Jim. But he's not damned."

66 0 look here, Fanny. I don't know what you're
talking about. Even Susan don't, either, half the
time. None of us. But we like you fine just the
same. Now, it ain't because Mangel's a Jew that
I can't go him. You're wrong there, Fanny. I
know lots of Jews. Lots of my pals is Jews. Mark
Pfennig's one, for instance. All the gamblers . .
half the gunmen . . the best of the bulls . . the
sharpest of the lawyers. ..."

"But Mangel's different T"

"Yes! His doddering old big-nosed face bow-
ing into the room. His softy grey hands weaving
inside each other. His flat feet that don't make a
squeak."

"Is he square?"

"0 he's square, all right. . . So far. He's
shrewd. He can be hard and smart, believe me!
It ain't that, Fanny."

"A lot you know what it is? It's because he's
a Jew, I tell you."

"It ain't. I got lots of friends "

"Jim, I don't think anybody can be a Jew, just
because his name happens to be Cohn or Levy."

"Fanny . . you're crazy!"

One twilight Fanny had them clear. . . .
More and more they came to Clara's flat. Even-
ing ' parties'' were frequent. Afternoons, Tessie

218

and Susan often called for Fanny, and took her
for a walk or to a show. It was Spring. The City
lay beneath the Sun's lubricity. The dirt in the
hard streets was fecund. The sparrows and the
robins daubed the warming world with their swift
flashes of life. It was Spring. And Fanny
moved, somnambulant, through a strange ease
spread for her by hands forever less strange.

— You . . and you . . and you : now I see you
clear.

These men and women were no accident. They
had words now she understood. They had wills
now — here was the wonder of her life — that
touched her own. Not Harry's will had touched
hers. Not her child's, to eat her's up. Not Chris-
topher Johns'. And Leon's . . Leon's will had
stood beyond her, over the ken of her horizons.

These wills touched hers! — these wills of
women disgraced, of men criminal and broken,
outlawed and dissolute.

— I have two hands, and upon each -of them five
fingers. My sickness, the harsh four years since
Jonathan, have wasted my flesh. Yet it is some-
how sweet. My hair is not the verdant hedge it
was, it is a little stringy, a little limp. But still
black. My eyes have fire at times. I am thirty-
five . . . and I am real, Fanny Luve !

They felt that she felt them clear. Clara above
all. The women above all. Her feeling them clear
at last was a bridge to them. Their will, long
champing on the brink of their division, moved on
her own.

219

Already they had spoken of details of their
dream to Mark Pfennig, to Statt, to Mangel.

"We will take a House. And you will take care
of us, Fanny!"

"And make us behave."

"And make the men behave."

"And bring God with you?" whispered Clara
low. . . .

They sat at her feet that evening after the
magic dusk of a hard city melting to Spring : they
were in Clara's bedroom.

From her chair, Fanny touched them: her fin-
gers in their hair: her skirt fringing their arms
and their faces.

"It's all arranged, Fanny dear."

They were below her, seated on the floor . .
Clara and Tessie and Susan. Their will surged
over her head.

She was flooded with their will. Slowly her
hands stroked hair and cheek. Their will
stormed her head . . surged torrentful about her.

Her eyes lay quietly upon the faces of her
friends. And her hands slow. And their will a
tempest.

Slowly, Fanny nodded.

Her left hand closed tight on the hand of Clara.
Her right hand upon Tessie 's upbrushed hair con-
tracted until the scalp of Tessie hurt. She nodded
slowly. . . .

220

THE STREET is quiet. The House stands
braced in a wall of higher houses dusty and
grimed about their stifled worlds. It is of
four stories. Its mellow red brick glows with at
least half a hundred years. White net curtains
angle the square windows. The stoop has an iron
rail that peels as Judge Mark mounts, his heav-
ing mass buttressed by a soft white hand upon it.

He upholds his right palm with its rust stains
to Fanny.

"I wish you'd have that rail off. Every time I
come here I've got to wash before I can even sit
down. ' '

Susan laughs. Tessie is humming, and her eyes
slide away with her balancing tune. Clara does
not care.

"I won't change it," says Fanny. "I love that
old rail. It's pretty. Besides, if it wasn't there
some night you'd fall over into the airy- way."

"Put another in its place."

"Well, I won't. And I won't have the bricks
painted either."

"Yes, but you went and did the windows — "

"She did them herself," says Clara.

"Don't you think the blue goes nice with the
red! It was fun."

. . An old house in which lived an old couple
and a little maid dressed all in black, with an
apron like a robin- white-breast. A big house:

221

these two old persons: one young. She brought
her lovers to her fourth-floor precincts. Creaking
stair . . creaking bannister . . a mutter : the hard
sweet adventure that became no lighter and no
less sweet. Her masters listened for the clandes-
tine footprints groping, mounting : for the swifter
descent as if the man had left a burden above.
They loved the love affairs of their pretty little
maid. She made them young, she added zest to
their evenings of Patience. . . . — " We won't need
you any longer, Zoe. We're going to bed. Good-
night, dear." . . their knowing her wickedness
spiced their prim demeanor, brought them delight
in the prim way of their maid. The old lady died.
A month: then again the furtive mounting steps.
The old man could not bear it. In his muffled re-
ception of the loveplay overhead he learned how
he missed his wife: how in the license of their
maid now many years, he and his dried spouse
had stolen fruit to themselves. In the gap between
the guessed fulness above and the empty bed
beside him, his nerves gave out. He withered and
he died. . . .

The paint of the windowsills and the Dutch net
curtains are Fanny's. Little else. The house has
the plethoric gloom of its mahogany false-Empire
chairs, its red brocades, its striped and flowered
walls. The beds are new and all alike: bright
brass, cheap, furnished with soft mattresses.

In the basement is the dining-room and the
kitchen. Upon the first floor a sitting room and
two partitioned cardrooms. On the second floor,
Susan and Tessie each has her bedroom. Above,

222

Clara has hers, and the back room is reserved for
whatever friend be granted it for the night. On
the top floor in back is the room of Lucy the maid
and a storeroom : in the front, the home of Fanny,
a room to sleep in, a room to stay in alone : for it
is understood that no one enter. Here then she
faced her life.

— My name is Frances. Frances Dirk. Frances
Luve. Luve . . Fourteen years ago there was
Harry. Nine years ago he went and there was
Edith. Six years . . near seven . . a man came
back in a black suit with white sharp lips, quoting
the words of Jesus. Harry, that. Just a less
Christian Harry . . . whipping me out with the
words of a Jew. And Edith has kept on growing.
I see you ! I feel you !

— This is my Home. Do you see it, Leon? This
is my home, I tell you. For this I came North.
For this, in the talk we never had, you told me I
did right. Leon does not know. Edith will never
know. Whores and gamblers and corrupted of-
ficers of the Law . . . God knows. God is inter-
ested. He must be. It must mean something. . . .

She thought of her failures in New York. The
House became a reality upon her . . a sort of
scarlet flower upon her black tree of failures. — I
have a will. I have a soul. I shall not let them
die. What she possessed of strength she forced
herself to give, now, wholly to the House. — It
must mean something!

She studied her men and women. All of them.
All of them, despite their falsity of life, held a
grain of loveliness. Perhaps because this grain

223

had been so stubborn to live, their life in the world
was false? She did not know. — But it shall
grow! The House shall mean something!

She made herself comfortable. There was
plenty of money. She went to old shops, glowing
in walls of dusty woodcuts, classic figures steel-
engraved ; shops that were a litter of ripe yester-
days crippled out of shape, beyond words, still
mellow. Here, piece by piece, leisuredly, she
picked together things for her room : — pictures, a
Pembroke table, a Hepplewhite desk, a set of
slender American Windsor chairs. She picked up
three graceful glass goblets, three candlesticks of
pewter. She made her room lovely. She watched
her language. She kept her language pure. She
watched the furrows in her cheeks and the gray-
ness. The great illness and the years before it
were gone, but they had taken her bloom and her
hair's wave. She used paint . . judiciously at
first. But here, her taste failed, unnourished in
the tasteless world about her, and by the world
of her own past where they did not paint at all : so
that she came to use paint badly.

She was past thirty-five. She was a little
stooped, a little brittle, broken. All of her body
had gone from curve to angle. Man moved her
not at all. She thought of the body of man with-
out memory, without desire. She bought a Bible.
She bought a copy, bound in crumbling black Le-
vant, of a certain Pascal's Thoughts she had
found once, browsing. It was Englished from the
French. She liked him, whoever he was. He
knew life. Yet he seemed young.

224

As her face grew sallow and the roundness of
her cheeks sagged long, as her hair became hard
and her knees went stiff, all of this resilience of
fire drew to the eyes of Fanny. They were larger,
blacker. They were hot wells of thought, sealed
fountains of vision that leaped at times upward
through the gray earth slumber of men.

And her hands had fingers sensitized like fila-
ments of seed. They seemed, as her eyes saw, to
spin with their faint tremor of response a wom-
an's clasp about the reach of her seeing.

— Harry said Jesus said But perhaps I

can understand. From Harry's standpoint it
was the ugly word and the ugly thing. That's it!
That's what Jesus meant. You, Boy . . you
broke me and when you had broken me you came
back and what you had done to me made me a
horror to yourself. Poor Harry, I forgive you.
For I understand. Like a child, you could not
bear to see your own bad act. You meant to thrust
out that . . not the beauty that was borne of it
despite you. Who can thrust out beauty? Jesus
didn't preach. Jesus described the state of chil-
dren like yourself. I guess his people were chil-
dren like yourself. Some folk have grown up
since then. And you, who quote Jesus, haven't.
That's funny, too. And all's forgivable. Even
you, down there, respectable and holy . . bring-
ing up Edith to be a child like yourself.

— But I love her. What can I do? Lord, I'm
beginning to think! so that my love for my child
does not burn me, twist me into despair? You
down there . . my Darling, . . not knowing your

225

mother, judging her with the child judgments of
your father . . God! but I must be strong. De-
spair is childish too. My love, it is a torrent
within me. Love, anger, need . . turn it away
from your hurts. Turn it away from yourself . .
which it can only break against and wreck. Turn
it where it can flow. Edith, shall I succeed in dar-
ing to think of you here? . . .

— Why is it poison to me when I judge? . . You,
Jim Statt, you are a callous monster. You've a
soul as black as hell. If I judge you I am poisoned.
. . . You, Susan, you're twisted. You hold a man
in your arms to feel him die there . . all that is
really he. That's your love: hate. That's your
passion: death. If I judge you, I am poisoned.
. . . And you, sweet Tessie, you're hardest of
all. With your sensitive soft soul and your un-
balanced eyes : with your wanton small hands that
turned you from an artist into this. If I despise
you, Tessie, I am poisoned.

— Clara, thee I love. My dark white mate ! My
boy ! If I make plans for thee, dearest, if I dream
to help thee, I am poisoned.

— What is happening to me? I am no good.
I am no better. Is it better not to hate? not to
despise, not to plan? Better or worse, I have no
choice. If I judge I am poisoned. . . .

— Our world unfolds beyond itself,

It is a yearning, it is a leaping toward God.

— I see Him !

When the trees break out,

When the trees heave up,

226

— I see Him !

When men dance like little trees full of

Springtime,

There you are, God. Here ... I am unafraid.
You cannot kill me, for I am part of your

Spring.

In the warm smoke shadow of the room the
chandelier thrust its gas tongues weakly. Be-
neath it on the table stood bottles of whiskey and
gin and syphon water. Night. The backyards
swathed silence : the shut of a window, the call of
a cat were in the Night like little breaks in a close
textured weave.

A slight man with heavy sparse-haired head on
thin shoulders, frail chest, spoke in a singing
voice. His English was good, the Irish brogue
was thick.

"It's this way — it's this way. We sit here
night after night and we have a good time. What
is it we do really? We destroy ourselves, and
that means we hurt less. We drug ourselves
down to these parts of life which are happy. "

"Man is not happy?"

"Man," Daniel Scome went on, "is caught bet-
ween the fulness of the brute and the fulness of
manhood. That's where we are. We're half way.
And we're weary and comfortless. Where we
are we suffer. We cannot rest. We cannot for-
get. Because we are half way. We must go on,
to a new happiness: or we must go back."

227

" That's what we do," said Mangel. "We go
back. . . ."

1 A voice came from the shadow: "We got laws
and governments . . we got arts and War, so we
can go back comfortably. Yes."

"We're corrupted. Adam and Eve have damned
us," spoke the thrust, sure of itself, of Statt. "We
don't slump back. We're naturally brutes."

"I don't believe you!" cried Mangel.

"Of course you don't. You ain't a Christian."

"Nor you!" said Daniel Scome. "If we were
naturally brutes, God would not bother about us."

"Nor we about God," said Fanny.

"It comes to the same thing. We are half way,
I tell you. We got to push on . .or we got to fall
back."

Tessie sighed. "I am tired. I don't want to
do anything."

"And I am tired too," Susan chimed in. "So I
don't do anything. I don't climb. I don't fall.
I'd like to see anyone of you budge me!"

"But you climb," said Fanny softly: Susan did
not hear. "You are all cold with climbing." . . .

In the corner beside Statt, shadowed, sat a tall
spare creature with a knot of hair on a high fanat-
ical brow, and eyes that burned blue in the dark.

* ' Sing then ! ' ' said he. His name was Loyden.
If he had another name, no one there knew it. "If
you're tired, sing. If you want to go up, sing.
If you want to fall back, sing!"

"Boy, you are crazy," said Mangel.

LOYDEN: I didn't say I wasn't. You aren't

228

logical. I said, sing! That has nothing to do
with crazy or not crazy.

FANNY : But if we want to be sane —

SCOME : We want to be too many things. Loy-
den's right. We want the truth — and we're afraid
of being mad. There we are caught, again, half
way — half way between what is really One.

LOYDEN: We're not caught when we sing . .
not when we dance —

STATT : You old scarecrow, what are you preach-
ing about? Who ever heard your voice? Who
ever saw you shake a leg?

LOYDEN : I have forgotten how to — without the
Music.

TESSIE : Don't talk about music! You get on my
nerves.

LOYDEN : You see ? It gets on her nerves. The
weakling. Music oozed out of her, died down to
her hands. And when they got twisted, it went
away.

SCOME: We don't know how to dance. That's
why we're here, drinking and loving women.

SUSAN : You don 't love us !

CLARA: (muttering) Only a woman can love a
woman.

LOYDEN: We don't know how to dance. Dance
for us, Judge Mark.

MARK: Shut up!

LOYDEN: (With a rising inflection to his voice)
Dance for us, Mangel.

MANGEL: I could read the Bible? Be still!

LOYDEN: The Western world is dying!

. . . There is a hush. And Loyden's voice that

229

was shrill moves down to a low monotone sway-
ing within the heavy fumes and shadows of the
room like a bird planing. . . .

LOYDEN : Death creeps np. Death creeps down.
The eyes are dead already. Who of the Western
World can see? The feet and the legs are dead
already. Where is there Dance, where is there
Music among us? Among the Black men, among
the Yellow men, among the Red men, yes. They
still have living limbs. They still have living
eyes. We stiffen with Death. Death creeps up,
Death creeps down . . into the heart of the dying
Western World,

. . There was a pause. The eyes of all gazed
into the shadow where a long thin head, wild-
haired, wild-throated, cast out words upon them.
The eyes of all turned: Fanny was out of her
chair. She moved to the bottle-littered table under
the gas. The yellow light lay heavy on her hair,
made her face glow pallid about her eyes that
were dark within themselves.

"I will dance for you," she said.

She lifted her hands. They were little and very
white upon her emaciate arms.

"Look up!"

But her eyes did not look up. They were dark
and lost within themselves.

"I will dance for you. Look up !" So she stood,
with her hands high, moveless.

The Night rolled slowly: lifting the room with
a faint jerking onward. They felt the rhythm of
the moving room, sailing upon the Night. Their

230

heads swayed and their eyes, upturned, stirred
faintly, carried by the slow-voyaging room.

The arms of Fanny were rigid over her head.
But she swayed along. The pulse in her throat
swayed with it. Each thing of matter, each
thing of thought in the room swayed on . . except
the rigid arms of Fanny. . . .

Stopped! . . . For the room was there.

They looked upon the miracle of their being
still in the room. Chairs, lights, bottles, persons
. . all was still in the room.

They got out of their chairs. They sank to
their knees on the floor.

"No!" shouted Fanny.

They were afraid.

"You cannot dance on your knees! Get up!
Can't you see?"

They saw her above them: dancing. They
saw the floor beneath them: dancing. . . . The
walls ! They clasped with terror for the pitching
floor. They clawed, and clasped. They) found
each other. They were glad. They! subsided.
Flesh pressed against flesh. Teeth knocked
against teeth. Brows beat upon carpet. . . .

In the corner, infinitely far from her, for he,
like her arms, had not moved with the room, sat
Loyden.

"What did I tell you, Luve? The Western
World is dying."

231

STILL the candles burned on the mellow table :
Samson Brenner and Mrs. Luve looked on
each other's faces above the flames. Rising
and rising, the candle flames came lower. Lower
at last than the faces of the woman and boy, and
of the high wine glasses.

She said : * ' Steadily more and more, I came to
think about your People. They were all about me.
They were all sorts. I wanted something of them.
But they knew nothing. They knew nothing of
themselves. Where was the difference between
them and us? They had the same women, they
had the same money, they played the same miser-
able games for both. Why did I want something
of them? . . .

"The Truth! . . Perhaps because of Leon . .
perhaps because of the ministry of Harry; be-
cause I knew of my own weakness — I wanted of
them the Truth.

i i There were six years of the House. ' '

"And then — ?" the boy's voice was hoarse. He
felt the sordid room and the sordid flat. He had
forgot the sordid reason of his coming. He felt
the sharp incongruence of the wine he had drunk
and of the slender glasses, and of the candles that
rose and that burned, rising, lower, at the table.
"What was the end?"

"The struggle between Jim Statt and Mangel
grew. It grew bitter. There was no reason for

232

it. Statt persecuted Abe . . pinched him and
tortured him: above all humiliated him. Until
what Tessie had foreseen came true."

" What was that?"

" Mangel the dirty Jew — 0 he was that! — Man-
gel turned good."

Clara is sick.

"I find nothing serious," says the Doctor. "A
bad bronchial cough, a chest none too strong but
unaffected. Somewhat run-down — and nervous. ' '
Fanny knew better — and worse.

Clara stays in bed. The House moves on. But
with six years done, Fanny can see a difference :
and in no fact more clearly than that Clara is
sick.

— She is wearing out! She who is not thirty.
The House is wearing out. I?

She brought her friend to her own room on the
Fourth floor, where it was quieter, where they
could be better together. The Fourth floor was a
hush over the hard accent of the House.

"I am happy here," smiled Clara. "It's great
fun being sick — and having you nurse me in your
own dear place."

Mark came little: came less. Nobody cared.
Clara and Fanny thought nothing of that. But
Clara got no better. There she was weak . . no
worse . . but also no better.

"The House wears away," thought Fanny . . .
and tried not to think of that. "What does that
matter?" But the House went on.

233

Fanny shopped and ruled and entertained.
There was the hush above that grew: there was
the wonted accent of their world below, wearing,
wearing . .

"I am afraid perhaps, I'm just lazy," Clara
said. "Doc don't think I'm sick. I'd better get
up—"

"You're tired, dear."

"Tomorrow I get up!"

"No. . . . Clara, when you get up, you'll go
back to your room downstairs. I love you, here,
Clara."

Clara's heavy eyelids shut with a soft gesture
of retiscence. The light in the room was dimmed.
The wood was old and mellow all about them.

"Thank you," she murmured.

Laughter and a volley of words pushed up.

"Who's that?"

"Mildred Dozen is here. And Thelma "

"They're wild animals, aren't they?"

"Yes. But Thelma 's stayed wild. Mildred's a
wild animal tamed. . . . "

Clara pondered. "They fit down there."

"You mean: we fit up here?"

Clara's eyes large on her friend: "We fit;
together "

Fanny sat beside her on the bed and took her
hand. So they stayed. Fanny saw two lines run-
ning close . . red lines . . : they bellied out, wide,
wide to hold the House: they ran in close once
more. They were less red — dimmer.

Laughter and words below volleyed up to them
. . . anonymous, sharp.

234

"Tell me," said Clara, "don't you think—"

"What dear!"

"That we fit together?"

Fanny bent over the white face of her friend.
[Suddenly, she kissed her lips. She laughed.

"You'll get better now."

"Fanny," the words came low. "Do I want to
get better?"

It was afternoon, and Fanny serving tea.

She gave a cup to Jack Baruch : rich-bodied boy
with thin long wrists and gold-curled hair, vague
eyes, and a cupid's Bow for a mouth.

She gave a cup to Foxie Wesser — master of
Jack : a fellow angular and small with sharp nose,
sharp eyes.

She gave a cup to Thelma Clark and to Mildred.

"I like tea," said Jack.

' l Why shouldn 't you f ' ' asked Fanny. It struck
her sudden how quietly these two young men were
dressed in their excellent store clothes.

"Well, it's funny to like tea. Luve, you're a
wonder, makin' us come here and have a good
time, drinking tea."

Thelma 's laughter: "Only boneheads need
booze. I'm tryin' and tryin' to like tea. Ever
since I been comin' here, I been tryin'. But I
can 't just. I 'm a bonehead. ' '

"Wisht I had your witsf" said Mildred. She
was blonde, doll-petite. Her lips curled lecherous
in her narrow face.

235

"What d'ya mean? 7 have wits?" Thelma 's
laughter. "I'm a damn fool. Ask Jack. That's
why I love him."

She turned her face — honest face with square
chin and high clear cheekbones — to the pretty boy
she loved. It was plain she loved him.

— My friends! These boys, these girls. Jack
Baruch who picks pockets. Wesser who handles
men like Baruch and the gunmen for Mangel and
for Statt — Wesser who was the Diplomat of pool-
rooms, with his sharp smooth chin and his ex-
cellent English, and his intelligent calm. These
girls —

Thelma got up. She kissed Jack, she kissed
Fanny. She paid no attention to the other two.

"Me for my afternoon's walk. Goodby."

"You're sensible, dear," said Fanny: the lithe
full body moved half in a prance away.

Wesser was still. — Where is the calm of Wes-
eer? Wesser was troubled. The absence of
Thelma who meant laughter and noise seemed to
make him uncovered. He picked at his trousers.
He smoked his cigar with a harsh swiftness . .
he who was so smooth. Jack was jolly. He who
had brought into the too hard sureness of the
House a bloom of adolescent melancholy, laughed
now loudly.

Jim Statt came in.

"Well, Wesser . . spoken to Fanny?"

"No," he looked furtively away.

Statt grunted and sat.

"A 'right then. I might 'a' known you'd flinch.
Well, I won't."

236

"Bight-0" Wesser's eyes flashed. He mut-
tered: "Your affair after all. ..."

"Have some tea, Jim?" Fanny held a cup.

"Thank you . . . Have you seen The World?"

"Now look here, Jim . . . you know I never
read the papers. ' '

"Of course not. You read up-to-date stuff like
the Bible. I know you. But here you've been
chewing with Wesser and Jack for an hour . .
and he's not told you a thing."

"Lieutenant, I've been drinking tea. Shop . .
and tea . . don't rhyme."

"Hell . . well Fanny, things are bad. Mangel
was raided list night."

Fanny gripped her chair. Sudden, she saw
Clara upstairs in bed . . white . . in the House
wearing, wearing.

"I didn't have a damn thing to do with it,
Fan," Jim went on. "I know appearances are
against me . I ain't had no love for Abe Mangel.
But I didn't do it—"

"Well, you can fix that up — "

"If you'd read the papers like a modern citizen,
you'd know better. Mangel knows I didn't do it.
Mangel's gone crazy. He's had his own place
raided!"

"What!"

"And he's an appointment for tomorrow morn-
ing with the District Attorney to peach on the
whole damn System."

Fanny was still. She took the paper that Statt
handed her. She did not read it.

"He'll go," she murmured.

237

"He's in earnest."

"He'll go. You've made him into this, Jim.
He'll go."

"Unless we stop him."
'You can't."

"Yes we can, Fanny. We can — and we got to-
night to do it."

"What do you mean?"

"Abe's coming here tonight . . to talk to you."

"Yes?"

"He goes out of that door — feet first."

Fanny stood up.

"You mean — you dare to mean — "

Statt stood also. Mildred and Baruch and Wes-
ser sat.

"Now look here, Fanny . . don't be a damn
fool too. Cards on the table. Wesser has the
program all arranged. There's no other way for
any of us. Too late. The three boys are ready
with the guns. Pfennig and Susan are off. They
won't be back till the coast is clear. So is the cook.
And there ain't any danger. You know the sure-
ness of the House. If it's done here, it's done.
And if it's not done here, — why it will be, earlier,
somewhere else. Almost as safe. But your House
goes to Hell. Do you get me? . . Either here
. . or out you go, the bunch of you."

"Mark?"

Jim Statt smiled. "Have you seen Pfennig?
Has he been here of late to see Clara, while she 's
so sick? I guess not. And you won't see him
either. He got wind o' this comin' . . the wise old
owl . . before it came. He is safe — outside."

238

"Tessie?"

"She's gone with Pfennig. It's been brewing
for a long time, ever since Clara sort of dimmed.
Everybody was wise, my dear Fanny, except you.
You see too many ghosts."

She saw the House, very real, clattering, crash-
ing—

1 ' You 're threatening me, Jim. ' '

" Fanny, not if you don't act foolish. It's too
late, even if we could seal him up. You got the
House here with Clara sick in it. Sick as hell.
Tessie's gone. Susan's ready. It's the best place
to do a necessary job. That's all, girl! Do you
want to get smashed? Eight away — turned out
— and Clara too, right out of bed?"

Fanny stood calm a moment. Then she sat
down.

"Get out of here, Statt," she said, trying to
calm her voice. * ' Get out of here. Quick ! ' '

"Hold her!" cried Statt. Fanny leaped toward
the back. Jack Baruch caught her.

"Jack—let go!"

"She won't do it. I see that," said Statt
"She'll phone to Mangel."

"Jack— let go!"

"I can't, Fanny. I'm sorry."

"Bind her to that chair."

Statt watched the operation. "Now, bind the
chair." The rope ate tight and inevitable in her
flesh.

"My men 11 come a? ten . . and pull yon . .
and release you. Mangel pipes at the same hour.
It'll be at the Dominion Cafe— if you want to

239

know, dear. And as to you . . don't forget- we
have your story and youVe got a daughter.7'
Fanny for a moment fainted in the burn of horror
and shame that flooded her eyes. "Come now,"
she heard him again as he turned to the others.
"Out of this."

They went before him docilely: not daring to
look back.

But Statt looked back. He came back.

"You've always been crazy, Fanny Luve," he
said. "And now, doin' this . . and for a dirty
Jew . . for a Jew you don't give a damn for . .
for a Jew you can't save." He looked at her.

She lay strained in her bonds. But her mind
was free. And her face, free looking at him, was
calm.

Statt came forward a little more.

"Why are you crazy, Fanny Luve?"

He stooped to his knee: he kissed the hand of
Fanny. Then he tramped out.

There was a smile on the face of Mrs. Luve.
Her eyes saw happenings far away as if all hap-
penings far away were happenings to smile on.

"For six hours I lay bound. I called and cried
for Clara who was in bed upstairs. Just three
flights up. She did not hear me. . . . She had
heard too many other calls, I guess, since she lay
there, to understand that this call was for her."
Mrs. Luve smiled. "No bell rang all that time,
and I stopped calling. . . .

240

"It seemed to me though, that I could hear the
shot that got old Abe in the heart, as he stepped
out into the street through the cafe's swinging
door. . . . Very soon after that, the police. Clara
and I were thrown into the street. Clara died in
the Hospital of pneumonia. That is all."

241

SEVEN

EARTH

ONE of the candles between the woman and
the boy had burned faster than the other.
It guttered, went out. She saw the death
of Clara. . . . The long gray room full of the
streaking stains of the white sick. Clara's black
hair and the wan sheet and the bars of the iron
bed. Clara's clasping arms, moist, shutting out
life. — Let me die with you ! . . The fading eyes
of Clara.

"You forgive me? forgive me? I should not
have brought you in, O Fanny. I am glad to pay
for that, I was mad! But there were six years.
... I have loved you. Now, you, what are you
going to do I"

"You forgive me, Clara? What becomes of any
of us? I have loved you also."

. . . " I murdered her. For what? . . White
Clara for a dirty Jew! Mangel is dead at any
rate . . . just dead in another place." . . .

"I was not sorry. Clara was dead. My
friend! My world was gone. I did not feel sor-
row. Walking the streets, the innumerable streets
my soul was as upon a journey through number-
less bodies and states of myself. Numberless
moments. And yet my soul was One. It was un-
changed. It moved through the broken sea of my
Disaster, it knew it was One. . . .

"It is One now. Here I am . . Four years I
have been here. Susan and Tessie I never saw

245 '

again. Thelma came back. Dear Thelma. She
has helped me. You know how. She saved . . I
can't guess by what means . . part of my furni-
ture from the crash of the House. She is loyal
like an animal. You do well, Samson Brenner,
caring even in the way you care, for Thelma. . . .

"Four years I have been here — "

Samson got up. Through the gloom of the heavy
room he groped to the sideboard. He found an-
other candle. He brought it back to the table. He
lighted it with the other that was low, and set it
alongside.

"I have a daughter," she said, "nearly as big
as you."

— I want to speak! What can I say to this
woman? It is hard, it will be braver to keep silent :
not to break this stillness in which her will so
strangely works — toward what? For her sake, I
am still.

"I am a failure. Look at me, Boy. Look at
me. Look at Fanny Dirk. There is light enough
to look."

He looked at her. But he saw only her eyes that
were very strong and clear.

' ' You have talked with me long, ' ' she said. ' ' Be
quiet with me now."

They faced each other over the mellow table. It
broadened, it narrowed: they were far and close.
There was a wave in the room, making the table
and the two flames and their own forms curve and
refract, as if their eyes caught this reality of them
together through some substance quick like flow-
ing water.

246

"Be still/' she whispered.
The clock gave a stroke: "Half . . past . .
eleven."
— He stays!

— He has listened to my words. He has

heard my will.
Carnally he came.
That is swept away.

My will has cleaned him unto me. He stays.
She watched him. Blond warm boy, with eyes
tender and virgin: afraid of the brusque world.
Boy with heart beating a measure beyond the
reach of your eyes !
— Shall I learn now?
What Leon promised? what the dolorous

years

Failed to fulfill?

Shall I learn now from you? . . .
He has stayed and been kind. Soon he will

go away,
Forgetting Thelma. Will you leave me

knowledge?
• — 0 I do not understand . . .

Why I have wanted, why I have wanted . .
Why I have fallen and fallen, looking for God !
You, Boy, won't you go away
And leave me Knowledge? . . .
Her hands were upon the table. His hands were
near her hands upon the table. Their eyes joined.
He rested upon the yearning of her eyes. His
mind was empty.

— Go away. Yes. Before I have lost!
Go, before your staying slays me, Boy.

247

Go — leave me Knowledge !

He did not stir. His eyes lay within her own
as in a womb, resting omnipotent, knowing no act.
She held him.

— Go. Eevealtome!

The bell rang.

—Go!

The bell rang.

The bell drove an iron finger between his eyes
'and her own. His eyes stirred. The bell rang.

—Go! By the will of God, go!
Leave me what my life has bled away
To find at the Bottom . .

The bell rang. His eyes were quickened, for
his senses knew not her but that the bell rang.

Fanny got up. He was fixed . . She felt a stir-
ring under her heart.

"Hush, Edith my child," she murmured, get-
ting up.

Her body was stiff and leaden. But she felt
with all her body how his eyes were quickened.
Her own eyes turned her about.

Fanny moved with her eyes. His eyes, stir-
ring to life beyond her, were within her womb like
a child unborn. . . . "Hush Edith!"

She moved through the tunnelling hall, a shadow
darker than it, about eyes that were wells of fire.
She had put back the chain upon the door. Groping
she loosed it. Thelma burst in. ...

Thelma Clark was there: exhilerant, laughing,
savage.

"0 you dear . . waiting all this time for me."
She swayed. "In the dark! Waiting, you sillies,

248

with a candle between you. What's the matter
with the gas?"

The room flared bright.

— Give me your eyes. Not to her! Let me hold
your eyes.

Thelma flung herself on Samson's lap. She
kissed him.

Fanny saw his eyes draw in, swerve to another
orbit, flame away. . . . The line of Thelma 's thigh
lashed in blue silk, the crumple of her little breasts
bursting within the lowcut waist . . . there, there.

The eyes of Samson died from the eyes of
Fanny.

He stood. He touched Thelma 's lips with his
hand.

"Come."

They were gone . . .

Fanny heard the door shut. She was alone. She
sat down where she had sat before at the table.
She arose. She shut out the gas. A peal of
Thelma 's laughter pierced the door. The room
clapped close about the fainting flame of the one
candle.

Fanny sat down where she had sat before. Be-
yond her rigid gaze was an empty place. Beyond
the empty place was the Night. Within her gaze
was the Night. Her eyes held nothing.

"And a Jew," she murmured "a Jew was to
bring me Light."

She faced the Emptiness about her. She met

249

it. Emptiness? The little candle stilly laid it
whole, perfect, before her. Behind her a shut
door. About her Emptiness.

"—and God!"

Sudden her eyes were hard. " Think of him,"
she spoke. Her mouth full of tears made her
voice liquid. "Think of him. Think of him,
Fanny. No one else ! . . Your Light-bearer, your
Prophet, your Voice in the Wilderness — there he
is, out there, in the arms of Thelma . . . Fanny,
dare to think. "

She was still. She was a little woman huddled
in the Dark with hard eyes, daring to think.

Daring to see !

Her mouth tremored. Her hands reached open
before her. They clasped. She drew her hands
in upon her breasts : and as they pressed, her eyes
blazed with anguish as if she held flame to her
flesh. She pressed . . she pressed. Her face
broke. . . . Then, from the wreckage of her fea-
tures there was born a smile making them clear
and sharp, making them fair and high. A Light
shone in them.

250

THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ

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